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SPHENOPTERIS  AFFINIS. 

A  Tern  of  the  Lower  Coal  Measures, 

(Hestored.) 


THE 


Testimony  of  the  Rocks  : 


OR, 


GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS     ON    THE    TWO 

THEOLOGIES,    NATURAL    AND 

REVEALED. 


BY 


HUGH    MILLER, 


AUTHOR  OF    THE  OLD  RED  SANDSTONE,"  "  FOOTPRINTS  OF  THB 
CREATOR,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


THIRTY-SECOND  THOUSAND. 


"  Thou  shall  be  in  league  with  the  stones  o£  the  field."  —  Job. 


NEW     YORK: 
ROBERT   CARTER   AND   BROTHERS, 

530  Broadway. 
1882. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1857,  by 

GOULD    AND    LINCOLN, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachuseit* 


JAMES   MILLER,  ESQ.,  F.R.S.E. 


PEOFESSOE  OF  SUEGERY  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  EDINBURGH. 


My  Deak  Sir, 

This  volume  is  cliiefly  taken  up  in  answering,  to  the  best 
of  its  author's  knowledge  and  ability,  the  various  questions  which  the  old 
theology  of  Scotland  has  been  asking  for  the  last  few  years  of  the  newest  of 
the  sciences.  Will  you  pardon  me  the  liberty  I  take  in  dedicating  it  to  you  ? 
In  compliance  with  the  peculiar  demand  of  the  time,  that  what  a  man  knows 
of  science  or  of  art  he  should  freely  communicate  to  his  neighbors,  we  took 
the  field  nearly  together  as  popular  lecturers,  and  have  at  least  so  far  resembled 
each  other  in  our  measure  of  success,  that  the  same  class  of  censors  have  been 
severe  upon  both.  For  while  you  have  been  condemned  as  a  physiologist  for 
asserting  that  the  human  framework,  when  fairly  wrought  during  the  week,  is 
greatly  the  better  for  the  rest  of  the  Sabbath,  1  have  been  described  by  the 
same  pen  as  one  of  the  wretched  class  of  persons  who  teach  that  geology,  rightly 
understood,  does  not  conflict  with  revelation.  Besides,  I  owe  it  to  your  kind- 
ness that,  when  set  aside  by  the  indisposition  which  renders  it  doubtful  whether 
I  shall  ever  again  address  a  popular  audience,  you  enabled  me  creditably  to 
fulfil  one  of  my  engagements  by  reading  for  me  in  public  two  of  the  following 
discourses,  and  by  doing  them  an  amount  of  justice  on  that  occasion  which 
could  never  have  been  done  them  by  their  author.    Further,  your  kind  atton- 


993G74 


VI  DEDICATION. 

tions  and  advice  during  the  crisis  of  my  illness  were  certainly  every  way  suite?» 
to  remind  me  of  those  so  gratefully  acknowledged  by  the  wit  of  the  last  century* 
when  he  bethought  him  of 

"  kind  Arbuthnot's  aid. 
Who  knew  liis  art,  but  not  his  trade." 

And  so,  though  the  old  style  of  dedication  has  been  long  out  of  fashion,  I  avail 
myself  of  the  opportunity  it  affords  me  of  expressing  my  entire  concurrence  in 
your  physiological  views,  my  heartfelt  gratitude  for  your  good  services  and 
friendship,  and  my  sincere  respect  for  the  disinterested  part  you  have  taken  in 
the  important  work  of  elevating  and  informing  your  humbler  countryfolk,  — 
while  at  the  same  time  maintaining  professionally,  with  Simpson  and  with 
Goodsir,  the  reputation  of  that  school  of  anatomy  and  medicine  for  which  the 
Scottish  capital  has  been  long  so  famous. 

I  am, 

My  Dear  Sir, 

With  sincere  respect  and  regard, 

Yours  affectionately, 

HUGH   MILLER. 


TO    THE    REAPER. 


Of  (he  twelve  following  Lectures,  four  (the  First,  Second,  Fifth,  and  Sixth) 
were  delivered  before  the  members  of  the  Edinburgh  Philosophical  Institution 
(1852  and  1855).  One  (the  Third)  was  read  at  Exeter  Hall  before  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  (1854),  and  the  substance  of  two  of  the  others  (the 
Eleventh  and  Twelfth)  at  Glasgow,  before  the  Geological  Section  of  the  British 
Association  (1855).  Of  the  five  others,  —  written  mainly  to  complete  and  impart 
a  character  of  unity  to  the  volume  of  which  they  form  a  part,  —  only  three  (the 
Fourth,  Seventh,  and  Eighth)  were  addressed  i-iva  voce  to  popular  audiences. 
The  Third  Lecture  was  published  both  in  this  country  and  America,  and  trans- 
lated into  some  of  the  Continental  languages.  The  rest  now  appear  in  print  for 
the  first  time.  Though  their  writer  has  had  certainly  no  reason  to  complain  of 
the  measure  of  favor  with  which  the  read  or  spoken  ones  have  been  received, 
they  are  perhaps  all  better  adapted  for  perusal  in  the  closet  than  for  delivery  in 
the  public  hall  or  lecture-room;  wbile  the  two  concluding  Lectures  are  mayhap 
suited  to  interest  only  geologists  who,  having  already  acquainted  themselves 
with  the  generally  ascertained  facts  of  their  science,  are  curious  to  cultivate  a 
further  knowledge  with  such  new  facts  as  in  the  course  of  discovery  are  from 
time  to  time  added  to  the  common  fund.  In  such  of  the  following  Lectures  as 
deal  with  but  the  established  geologic  phenomena,  and  owe  whatever  little  merit 
they  may  possess  to  the  inferences  drawn  from  these,  or  on  the  conclusions  based 
upon  them,  most  of  the  figured  illustrations,  though  not  all,  will  be  recognized 
as  familiar:  in  the  two  concluding  Lectures,  on  the  contrary,  they  will  be  found 
to  be  almost  entirely  new.  They  are  contributions,  representative  of  the  patient 
gleanings  of  years,  to  the  geologic  records  of  Scotland ;  and  exhibit,  in  a  more 
or  less  perfect  state,  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  all  the  forms  yet  detected  in  tlie 
rocks  of  her  earlier  Paleozoic  and  Secondary  floras. 

It  will  be  seen  that  I  adopt,  in  my  Third  and  Fourth  Lectures,  that  scheme  of 
reconciliation  between  the  Geologic  and  Mosaic  Records  which  accepts  tlie  six 
days  of  creation  as  vastly  extended  periods;  and  I  have  been  reminded  by  a 
somewhat  captious  critic  that  I  once  held  a  very  different  view,  and  twitted  wi*h 
what  he  terms  inconsistency.  I  certainly  did  once  believe  with  Chalmers  and 
with  BuckJand  that  the  six  days  were  simply  natural  days  of  twenty-four  hours 
eacli,  — that  they  had  compressed  the  entire  work  of  the  existing  creation,  — and 
that  the  latest  of  the  geologic  ages  was  separated  by  a  great  chaotic  gap  from 
our  own.    My  labors  at  the  time  as  a  practical  geologist  had  been  very  mucli 


VIII  TO     Till-:     HEADER. 

restricted  to  the  Palaeozoic  and  Secondary  rocks,  more  especially  to  the  Old  Red 
and  Carboniferous  Systems  of  the  one  division,  and  the  Oolitic  System  of  the 
other;  and  the  long  extinct  organisms  which  I  found  in  them  certainly  did  not 
conflict  with  the  view  of  Chalmers.  All  I  found  necessary  at  the  time  to  the 
work  of  reconciliation  was  some  scheme  that  would  permit  me  to  assign  to 
the  earth  a  high  antiquity,  and  to  regard  it  as  the  scene  of  many  succeeding 
creations.  During  the  last  nine  years,  however,  I  have  spent  a  few  weeks  every 
autumn  in  exploring  the  later  formations,  and  acquainting  myself  with  their 
peculiar  organisms.  I  have  traced  them  upwards  from  the  raised  beaches  and 
old  coast  lines  of  the  human  period,  to  the  brick  clays,  Clyde  beds,  and  drift  and 
boulder  deposits  of  the  Pleistocene  era,  and  again  from  these,  with  the  help  of 
museums  and  collections,  up  through  the  mammaliferous  crag  of  England,  to 
its  Red  and  its  Coral  crags.  And  the  conclusion  at  which  I  have  been  compelled 
to  arrive  is,  that  for  many  long  ages  ere  man  was  ushered  into  being,  not  a  few 
of  his  humbler  contemporaries  of  the  fields  and  woods  enjoyed  life  in  their 
present  haunts,  and  that  for  thousands  of  years  anterior  to  even  their  appearance, 
many  of  the  existing  molluscs  lived  ;n  our  seas.  That  day  during  which  the 
present  creation  came  into  being,  and  in  which  God,  when  he  had  made  "the 
beast  of  the  earth  after  his  kind,  and  the  cattle  after  their  kind,"  at  length 
terminated  the  work  by  moulding  a  creature  in  his  own  image,  to  whom  he 
gave  dominion  over  them  all,  was  not  a  brief  period  of  a  few  hours'  duration, 
but  extended  over  mayhap  millenniums  of  centuries.  No  blank  chaotic  gap  of 
death  and  darkness  separated  the  creation  to  which  man  belongs  from  that  of  the 
old  extinct  elephant,  hippopotamus,  and  hyfeua;  for  familiar  animals  such  as 
the  red  deer,  the  roe,  the  fox,  the  wild  cat,  and  the  badger,  lived  throughout  the 
peiiod  which  connected  their  times  with  our  own ;  and  so  I  have  been  compelled 
to  hold,  that  the  days  of  creation  were  not  natural,  but  prophetic  days,  and 
stretched  far  back  into  the  bygone  eternity.  After  in  some  degree  committing 
myself  to  the  other  side,  I  have  yielded  to  evidence  which  I  found  it  impossible 
to  resist:  and  such  in  this  matter  has  been  my  inconsistency,  —  an  inconsistency 
of  which  !he  world  has  furnished  examples  in  all  the  sciences,  and  will,  I  trust, 
ip  its  onward  progress,  continue  to  furnish  many  more 

Edi>'burgh,  December,  1856. 


[The  last  proofs  of  this  preface  were  despatched  by  the  Author  to  his  printer 

oiily  the  day  before  that  melancholy  termination  of  his  life,  the  details  of  which 
A  111  be  found  in  the  '•  Memorials  "  following.  —Am.  Publishers.) 


CONTENTS. 


Page 
Memorials  of  the  Death  and  Character  of  Hugh  Miller,  7 


LECTURE  FIRST. 
The  Pal^ontological  History  of  Plants,  .       •       .         33 

LECTURE  SECOND. 
The  Pal^ontological  History  of  Animals,         .        ,       .         86 

LECTURE  THIRD. 
The  Two  Records,  Mosaic  and  Geological,         •       .       .       i41 

LECTURE  FOURTH. 
The  Mosaic  Vision  of  Creation,      ......       179 

LECTURE  FIFTH. 
Geology  in  its  Bearings  on  the  Two  Theologies.    Part  I.       211 

LECTURE  SIXTH. 
Geology  IN  its  Bearings  ON  THE  T'.vo  Tukologies.    Part  II.     237 


X  CONTENTS. 

Page 
LECTURE  SEVENTH. 

The  NoACHiAN  Deluge.    Part  1 283 

LECTURE  EIGHTH. 
The  Noachian  Deluge.    Part  II 320 

LECTURE  NINTH. 
The  Discoverable  and  the  Revealed, 362 

LECTURE  TENTH. 
The  Geology  of  the  Anti-Geologists,  .       .       -       «       .       392 

LECTURE  ELEVENTH. 
On  the  Less  Known  Fossil  Floras  of  Scotland.    Part  I.       429 

LECTURE  TWELFTH. 

0:j  the  Less  Known  Fossil  Floras  of  Scotland.    Part  II.      463 


i 


c 


fist  of  llhistraticits. 


Paob 
A  Restoration  of  Sphenopteris  affinis  (Frontispiece) 

1.  The  Genealogy  of  Plants, 40 

2.  Cyclopteris  Hibernicus, 42 

3.  Conifer  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone, 43 

4.  The  Genealogy  of  Animals, 45 

5.  Oldhamia  autiqua  (oldest  known  Zoophyte), 43 

6.  Palasochorda  minor, 49 

7.  Lycopodium  clavatum, 51 

8.  Equisetum  fluviatile, 51 

9.  Osiauxida,  reguMs  (Royal  Fern), 52 

10.  Pinus  sylvestris  ( Scotch  Fir), 53 

11.  Calamite?  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone 55 

12.  Lycopodite?  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone, 55 

13.  Fern?  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone, 56 

14 — 19.  Ferns  of  the  Coal  Measures, 58 

20.  Altingia  excelsa  (A'or/b^^- /s/anrf  Pi«c), 59 

21.  East  Indian  Fern  {.4sopAj7a/>erro<eM"ana), 60 

22.  Section  of  Stem  of  Tree-Fern  ( Cyathea), 6« 

'23—25.  Lepidodendron  Sternbergii, 62 

26.  Calamites  Mougeotii, 63 

27.  Sphenophyllum  dentatuni, 63 

28.  Sigillaria  reuiformis, 64 

29.  Sigillaria  reniformis  (nat.  size), 65 

30.  Sigillaria  pachyderma, 66 

31.  Stigmaria  ficoides, 67 

32.  Favularia  tessellata, 68 

33.  Lepidodendron  obovatnm, 68 

34.  Cycas  revoluta,        .       .        , 69 

35.  Zamia  pungens,           .        • 69 

36.  Zamia  Feneonis,      . 69 

37.  Mantellia  nidiforrais,          .                70 

1 


XII  LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Faob 

38.  Equisetum  cohimnare,  '1 

39.  Carpolithes  conica, '2 

40.  Carpolithes  Bucklandii, '2 

41.  Acer  trilobatum, ' '" 

42.  Ulmus  Bronnii  (leaf  of  a  tree  allied  to  the  Elm), '4 

43.  Palmacites  Lamanonis  (a  Palm  of  the  Miocene  of  Aix),  .        .  .75 

44.  Cyclophthalmus  Bucklandii  {a  Fossil  Scorpion  of  the  Coal  Measures  of  Bo- 

hemia),   °1 

45.  Fossil  Dragon-Fly, 83 

46.  Cyathaxonia  Dalmani, 88 

47.  Glyptocrinus  decadactylus 88 

48.  Calymene  Blumenbachii, 89 

49.  Orthisina  Verneuill,  89 

50.  Lituites  cornu-arietis,     .        .        .        .        • 89 

51.  Lingula  Lowisii, 89 

52.  Port  Jackson  Shark  (  Cestracion  PhiUippi), 91 

63.  The  Genealogy  of  Fishes, 93 

54.  Amblypterus  macropterus  (a  Ganoid  o/«/ie  CarJon(/eroiM  Syiiewi),  .         94 

55.  Lebias  cephalotes  (  Cycloids  of  Aix), 94 

56.  Platax  altissimus  (a  Ctenoid  of  Monte  Bolca), 95 

67.  Pterichthys  oblongus, 98 

58.  Pleuracanthus  laevissimus,  100 

59.  Carcharias  productus  (  Cutting  Tooth), 101 

60.  Placodus  gigas  (  Crushing  Teeth), 101 

61.  Vespertilio  Parisiensis  (a  Ba«  o/«Ae  Eocene), 106 

62.  Ichthyosaurus  communis, 106 

63.  Plesiosaurus  dolichodeirus, 108 

64.  Pterodactylus  crassirostris,  . 108 

66.  Chelonia  Benstedi, 109 

66.  Pal<Eopbis  Toliapicus  ( Ophidian  of  the  Eocene),  .        w        .        .        •       110 

67.  Bird-tracks  of  the  Connecticut, 113 

68.  Fossil  Footprint,  114 

69.  Thylacotherium  Prevosti, 11" 

70.  Anoplotherium  commune, •        ...      120 

71.  Animals  of  the  Paris  Basin, 121 

72.  Dinotherium  giganteum, 122 

73.  Elephas  primigenius  ( Great  British  Elephant),  ,        ,        r        .        .        .  127 

74.  Trogontheriura  Cuvieri  (  Crigantic  Beaver),  ,...■.      128 

75.  Ursus  spelseus  ( Cave  Bear), ...  128 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS.  XIII 

Pack 

76.  Hj'rena  spelaea  ( Cave  Hya:na), 129 

77.  Asaplms  caudatus,  134 

78.  Orthoceras  laterale, 134 

79.  Spirigerina  reticularis, 134 

80.  Ammonites  margaritatus, 134 

81   Ammonites  bisulcatus, 134 

82.  Belemuitella  mueronata, 134 

83.  Belemnites  sulcatus, 134 

84.  Murex  alveolatus, ''135 

85.  Astarte  Omalii, •        •        -135 

86.  Balanus  crassus,    .        .        , •        •      136 

87.  Astarte  arctica, 152 

88.  Tellina  proxima, 152 

89.  Norwegian  Spruce  (vl')(V.s  fxffisa),  153 

90.  Lepidodendrou  Stenibergii, 164 

91.  Calamites  cannaformis, 165 

92.  Megatherium  Cuvieri, 167 

93.  Skull  of  Diuotherium  giganteum, .  168 

94-  Ammonites  Humphriesianus, 242 

95.  Encrinites  moniliformis, 243 

96.  Cupressocrinus  crassus, 243 

97.  Pentacrinus  fasciculosus, 245 

98.  Chamfered  and  Imbricated  Scales, 246 

99.  Scale  of  Holoptychius  giganteus,  247 

100  Section  of  Scale  of  Holoptychius,       ...                ....      248 

101.  Sigillaria  Groeseri, 255 

102—104.  Whorled  Shells  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone, 266 

105.  Murchisonia  bigranulosa, 258 

106.  Conularia   ornata,         ..*......  .      258 

107-  Calico  pattern  (Mrtrtc/ies^er), 259 

108.  Smithia  I'engellyi, 259 

109.  Apamaean  Medal, 298 

110.  Old  Mexican  Picture,  299 

111.  Megaceros  Hibernicus  ( Irish  Elk), 331 

112.  Mylodon  robustus, 346 

113.  Glyptodon  clavipes, 346 

114.  The  Geography  of  Oosmas, 376 

115   The  Heavens  and  Earth  of  Cosmas, 377 

116.  HummuUteslsevigata  {Pharaoh'' s  Beans),  421 


XIV  LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS. 

rAoit 

117.  Silurian  Organism,  Graptolite,  etc., 431 

118    Fucoid, 433 

119.  Fucoids, 434 

120.  Plant  re.sembling  Lycopodium  clavatum, 437 

121.  Parka  decipiens, 449 

122.  Fossil  Fern  {probably), 450 

123.  Unnamed  Fossil  Plant, 450 

124.  Cyclopterus  Hibernicus, 458 

125.  New  and  peculiar  Fern  from  Airdrie  coal  field,  464 

126.  Stigmaria, 465 

127.  The  same,  magnified, 465 

128.  Stigmaria, 466 

129.  Sphenopteris  bifida, 470 

130.  Conifers? •       ...      475 

131.  Conifer  Twigs, -476 

132.  Unnamed  Fossil  Plant, 478 

133.  Zamia, • 479 

134.  Zamia, 480 

135.  Zamia  of  the  Lias, 481 

136.  Zamia  of  the  Oolite, 481 

137.  Zamia  resembling  Z.  lanceolata, 482 

138.  Fossil  Cone, 483 

139.  Fossil  Cone 484 

140.  Helmsdale  Fossil  Plants, 485 

141.  Fossil  Ferns  in  Helmsdale  Deposits, 486 

142.  Unnamed  Fossil  Plant, 488 

143.  Pecopteris  obtusifolia, 489 

144.  Apparent  Fern  [new), 490 

145.  Pachypteris, 490 

146.  Phlebopteris, 491 

147.  Unnamed  Fossil  Plant, 492 

148.  Pentagon,  illustrative  of  Fern  allies, 493 

149.  Imbricated  Stem, 494 

150.  FossiWlsmt  (Helmsdale), 495 

151.  Dicotyledonous  Leaf  of  the  Oolit«, 496 

152.  Fern, -497 


MEMORIALS 


OF 


HUGH     MILLEH. 


Unknown  he  came.    He  went  a  Mystery — 

A  mighty  vessel  foundered  in  the  calm. 
Her  freight  half-given  to  the  world.    To  die 

He  longed,  nor  feared  to  meet  the  great  "  I  AM." 
Fret  not.    God's  mystery  is  solved  to  him. 

He  quarried  Truth  all  rough-hewn  from  the  earth. 
And  chiselled  it  into  a  perfect  gem  — 

A  rounded  Absolute.    Twain  at  a  birth  — 
Science  v/ith  a  celestial  halo  crowned, 

And  Heavenly  Truth  —  God's  Works  by  His  Word  illumed 
These  twain  he  viewed  in  holiest  concord  bound. 

Reason  outsoared  itself.    His  mind  consumed 
By  its  volcanic  fire,  and  frantic  driven. 
He  dreamed  himself  in  hell  and  woke  in  heaven. 

Edinburgh,  December.  18S6. 


\  I 


M  E  M  0  H I  A  L  S 


OF     THE 


DEATH  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HUGH  MILLER, 


WITH     AN 


ACCOUNT   OF   HIS   FUNERAL  OBSEQUIES. 


Near  the  end  of  last  autumn  the  American  publishers  of 
Hugh  Miller's  works  received  from  him,  through  his  Edinburgh 
publishers,  the  offer  of  a  new  work  from  his  pen.  The  offer 
was  accepted  and  a  contract  was  at  once  closed.  Soon  the  ad- 
vance sheets  began  to  come ;  and  as  successive  portions  were 
received  and  perused,  it  became  more  and  more  evident  that 
the  woi'k  was  destined  not  only  to  extend  his  fame,  but  to 
establish  for  him  new  and  special  claims  to  the  admiration 
and  gratitude  of  mankind.  In  the  midst  of  these  anticipa- 
tions, and  ere  more  than  half  the  sheets  had  been  received,  the 
publishers  and  the  public  here  were  startled  by  the  news  that 
Mr.  Miller  had  come  to  a  violent  death.  The  paragraph  con- 
veying the  intelligence  was  such  as  to  leave  the  mind  in  a  state 
of  painful  suspense.  But  the  next  steamer  from  Europe 
brought  full  details  of  the  lamentable  event.  It  appeared  that 
in  a  momentary  fit  of  mental  aberration  he  had  died  by  his 
own  hand,  on  the  night  of  December  23d,  1856.  The  cause 
was  over  much  brain-work.  He  had  been  long  and  incessantly 
engaged  in  preparing  the  j^resent  work  for  the  press,  when, 
just  as  he  had  given  the  last  touches  to  the  eloquent,  the  im- 
mortal record,  reason  abandoned  her  throne,  and  in  the  brief 
interregnum,  that  great  light  of  science  was  quenched  forever. 

The  event  caused  universal  lamentation  throughout  the 
British  Isles.     It  was  treated  as  a  public  calamity.     The  British 


8  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

press,  from  the  London  Times  to  the  remotest  provincial  news- 
paper, gave  expression  to  the  general  sorrow  in  strains  of  un- 
wonted eloquence  ;  and  in  so  doing  recounted  his  great  services 
to  the  cause  of  science,  and  paid  homage  to  his  genius. 

Some  of  the  articles  which  the  event  thus  called  forth  have 
seemed  to  the  American  publishers  worthy  of  preservation, 
Irom  the  authentic  facts  which  they  embody,  the  judgments 
which  they  express,  and  the  literary  excellence  by  which 
they  are  marked.  They  have  therefore  determined  to  print 
Ihem  in  connection  with  this  work  as  permanent  Memorials 
of  its  distinguished  and  lamented  author. 

The  first  piece  appeared  in  the  Edinhirgh  Witness  of  Decem- 
ber 27th,  1856, — the  paper  of  which  Mr.  Miller  had  been  the 
editor  from  its  establishment  in  1840.  It  presents  an  authen- 
tic account  of  the  circumstances  attending  his  death,  and  is 
understood  to  be  from  the  pen  of  the  Rev.  William  Hanna, 
L.L.  D.,  tlie  son-in-law  and  biographer  of  Dr.  Chalmers,  and 
sometime  editor  of  the  North  British  Review. 

In  the  belief  that  nothing  touching  the  character  and  memory  of 
such  a  man  can  be  regarded  with  other  than  the  deepest  interest, 
the  friends  of  Mr.  Hugh  Miller  have  thought  it  due  at  once  to 
his  great  name  and  to  the  cause  of  truth,  to  lay  fully  before  the 
public  a  statement  of  the  most  mournful  circumstances  under  which 
he  has  departed  from  this  life.  For  some  months  past  his  over- 
tasked intellect  had  ^ven  evidence  of  disorder.  He  became  the 
prey  of  false  or  exaggerated  alarms.  He  fancied  —  if,  indeed,  it 
was  a  fancy  —  that  occasionally,  and  for  brief  intervals,  his  faculties 
(juite  failed  him,  —  that  his  mind  broke  down.  He  was  engaged  at 
this  time  with  a  treatise  on  the  "  Testimony  of  the  Rocks,"  upon 
which  he  was  putting  out  all  his  strength,  —  working  at  his  toj)- 
most  pitch  of  intensity.  That  volume  will  in  a  few  weeks  be  in  the 
hands  of  many  of  our  readers ;  and  while  they  peruse  it  with  the 
saddened  impression  that  his  intellect  and  genius  poured  out  their 
latest  treasures  in  its  composition,  they  Avill  search  through  It  in  vain 
for  the  slightest  evidence  of  feebleness  or  decaying  power.  Rather 
'  let  us  anticipate  the  general  verdict  that  will  be  pronounced  upon 
»t,  and  speak  of  it  as  one  of  the  ablest  of  all  his  writings.  But  he 
wrought  at  it  too  eagerly.     Hours  after  midnight  the  Ught  was  seen 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER.  9 

to  allmmor  throuffh  the  -window  of  that  room  which  within  the  same 
eventful  week  was  to  witness  the  close  of  the  volume,  and  the  close 
of  the  writer's  life.  This  over-working  of  the  brain  began  to  tell 
upon  his  mental  health.  lie  had  always  been  somewhat  moodily 
apprehensive  of  being  attacked  by  footpads,  and  had  -carried  loaded 
firearms  about  his  person.  Latterly,  having  occasion  sometimes  to 
return  to  Portobello  from  Edinburgh  at  unseasonable  hours,  he  had 
furnished  himself  with  a  revolver.  But  now,  to  all  his  old  fears  as 
to  attacks  upon  his  person,  there  was  added  an  exciting  and  over- 
mastering Impression  that  his  house,  and  especially  that  Museum, 
the  fruit  of  so  much  care,  which  was  contained  in  a  separate  outer 
building,  were  exposed  to  the  assault  of  burglars.  He  read  all  the 
recent  stories  of  house  robberies.  He  believed  that  one  night,  lately, 
an  actual  attempt  to  break  in  upon  his  Museum  had  been  made. 
Visions  of  ticket-of-leave  men,  prowling  about  his  premises,  haunted 
him  by  day  and  by  night.  The  revolver,  which  lay  nightly  near 
him,  was  not  enough ;  a  broad-bladed  dagger  was  kept  beside  it ; 
whilst  behind  him,  at  his  bed  head,  a  claymore  stood  ready  at  hand. 
A  week  or  so  ago,  a  new  and  more  aggravated  feature  of  cerebral 
disorder  showed  itself  in  sudden  and  singular  sensations  in  his  head. 
They  came  only  after  lengthened  intervals.  They  did  not  last 
long,  but  were  Intensely  violent.  The  terrible  Idea  that  his  brain 
was  deeply  and  hopelessly  diseased,  —  that  his  mind  was  on  the 
verge  of  ruin, — took  hold  of  hira,  and  stood  out  before  his  eye  In  all 
that  appalling  magnitude  in  which  such  an  imagination  as  his  alone 
could  picture  It.  It  was  mostly  at  night  that  these  wild  paroxysms 
of  the  brain  visited  him ;  but  ujj  till  last  IMonday  he  had  spoken  of 
them  to  no  one.  A  friend  who  had  a  long  conversation  with  him 
on  the  Thursday  of  last  week,  never  enjoyed  an  interview  more,  or 
remembers  him  in  a  more  genial  mood.  On  the  Saturday  forenoon 
another  friend  from  Edinburgh  found  him  in  the  same  happy  frame. 
As  was  his  wont  when  with  an  old  friend  with  whom  he  felt  partlcti- 
larly  at  ease,  he  read  or  recited  some  favorite  passages,  repeating,  on 
this  occasion,  with  great  emphasis,  that  noble  prayer  of  John  Knox,* 
which,  he  told  his  friend,  it  had  been  his  frequent  custom  to  repeat 
privately  during  the  days  of  the  Disruption.  On  the  forenoon  of 
Sunday  last  he  worshipped  in  the  Free  Church  at  Portobello ; 
and  In  the  evening  read  a  little  woi'k  which  had  been  put  into  his 
bands,  penning   that  brief  notice  of  it  which  will  be  read  with 

•  The  Prayer  will  be  found  at  the  end  of  these  Memorials. 


10  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

melancholy  interest  as  his  last  contribution  to  this  journal.  About 
ten  o'clock  on  Monday  morning  he  took  what  with  him  was  an  alto- 
gether unusual  step.  He  called  on  Dr.  Balfour,  in  Portobello,  to 
consult  him  as  to  his  state  of  health.  "  On  my  asking,"  says  Dr. 
Balfour,  in  a  communication  with  which  we  have  been  favored, 
"  what  was  the  matter  with  him,  he  replied,  '  My  brain  is  giving 
way.  I  cannot  put  two  thoughts  together  to-day.  I  have  had  a 
dreadful  night  of  it ;  I  cannot  face  another  such.  I  was  impressed 
with  the  idea  that  my  Museum  was  attacked  by  robbers,  and  that  I 
had  got  up,  put  on  my  clothes,  and  gone  out  with  a  loaded  pistol  to 
shoot  them.  Immediately  after  that  I  became  unconscious.  How 
long  that  continued,  I  cannot  say ;  but  when  I  awoke  in  the  morn- 
ing I  was  trembling  all  over,  and  quite  confused  in  my  brain.  On 
rising  I  felt  as  if  a  stiletto  was  suddenly,  and  as  quickly  as  an  electric 
shock,  passed  through  my  brain  from  front  to  back,  and  left  a  burn- 
ing sensation  on  the  top  of  the  brain  just  below  the  bone.  So  thor- 
oughly convinced  was  I  that  I  must  have  been  out  through  the  night, 
that  I  examined  my  trousers  to  see  if  they  were  wet  or  covered  with 
mud,  but  could  find  none.'  He  further  said,  — '  I  may  state  that  I 
was  somewhat  similarly  affected  through  the  night  twice  last  week, 
and  I  examined  my  trousers  in  the  morning  to  see  if  I  had  been  out. 
Still  the  tei-rible  sensations  were  not  nearly  so  bad  as  they  were  last 
night ;  and  I  may  further  inform  you,  that  towards  the  end  of  last 
week,  while  passing  through  the  E.xchange  in  Edinburgh,  I  was  seized 
with  such  a  giddiness  that  I  staggered,  and  would,  I  think,  have 
fallen,  had  I  not  gone  into  an  entry,  where  I  leaned  against  the 
wall,  and  became  quite  unconscious  for  some  seconds.' "  Dr.  Bal- 
four stated  his  opinion  of  the  case ;  told  him  that  he  was  over-work- 
ing WiS  brain,  and  agreed  to  call  on  him  on  the  following  day  to  make 
a  fuller  examination.  Meanwhile  the  quick  eye  of  affection  had 
noticed  that  there  was  something  wrong,  and  on  Monday  forenoon 
Mrs.  Miller  came  up  to  Edinburgh  to  express  her  anxiety  to  Pro- 
fessor Miller,  and  request  that  he  would  see  her  husband.  "  I  ar- 
ranged," says  Professor  Miller,  "to  meet  Dr.  Balfour  at  Shrub 
Mount  (Mr.  Hugh  Miller's  house),  on  the  afternoon  of  next  day. 
We  met  accordingly  at  half-past  three  on  Tuesday.  He  was  a  little 
annoyed  at  Mrs.  Miller's  having  given  me  the  trouble,  as  he  called 
it,  but  received  me  quite  in  his  ordinary  kind,  friendly  manner. 
We  examined  his  chest  and  found  that  unusually  well ;  but  soon 
we  discovered  that  it  was  head  symptoms  that  made  him  uneasy. 
He  acknowledged  having  been,  night  after  night,  up  till  very  late 


MEMORIALS    OF     HUGH     MILLKU.  11 

fn  the  morning,  working  hard  and  continuously  at  lus  new  book, 
'which,'  with  much  satisfaction,  he  said,  'I  have  finished  this  day^ 
He  was  sensible  that  his  head  had  suffered  in  consequence,  as  evi- 
denced in  two  ways:  first,  occasionally  he  felt  as  if  a  very  fine 
poignard  had  been  suddenly  passed  through  and  through  his  brain. 
The  pain  was  intense,  and  momentarily  followed  by  confusion  and 
giddiness,  and  the  sense  of  being  'very  drunk,' — unable  to  stand  or 
walk.  He  thought  that  a  period  of  unconsciousness  must  have  fol- 
lowed this,  —  a  kind  of  swoon,  —  but  he  had  never  fallen.  Second, 
what  annoyed  him  most,  however,  was  a  kind  of  nightmare,  which 
for  some  nights  past  had  rendei-ed  sleep  most  miserable.  It  was  no 
dream,  he  said ;  he  saw  no  distinct  vision,  and  could  remember  nolh- 
intr  of  what  had  passed  accurately.  It  was  a  sense  of  vague  and 
yet  intense  horror,  with  a  conviction  of  being  abroad  in  the  night 
wind,  and  dragged  through  places  as  if  by  some  invisible  power. 
'  Last  night,'  he  said,  '  I  felt  as  if  I  had  been  ridden  by  a  witch  for 
fifty  miles,  and  rose  far  more  wearied  in  mind  and  body  than  when 
I  lay  down.'  So  strong  was  his  conviction  of  having  been  out,  that 
he  had  difficulty  in  persuading  himself  to  the  contrary,  by  carefully 
examining  his  clothes  in  the  morning,  to  see  if  they  were  not  wet  or 
dirty;  and  he  looked  inquiringly  and  anxiously  to  his  wife,  asking 
if  she  was  sure  he  had  not  been  out  last  night,  and  walking  in  this 
disturbed  trance  or  dream.  His  pulse  was  quiet,  but  tongue  foul. 
The  head  was  not  hot,  but  he  could  not  say  it  was  free  from  pain. 
But  I  need  not  enter  into  professional  details.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
we  came  to  the  conclusion  that  he  was  sutFering  from  an  over-worked 
mind,  disordering  his  digestive  organs,  enervating  his  whole  frame, 
and  threatening  serious  head  affection.  We  told  him  this,  and  en- 
joined absolute  discontinuance  of  work,  bed  at  eleven,  light  supper 
(he  had  all  his  life  made  that  a  principal  meal),  tliinnlng  the  hair  of 
the  head,  a  warm  sponging-bath  at  bed  time,  &c.  To  all  our  com- 
mands he  readily  promised  obedience,  not  forgetting  the  discontin- 
uance of  neck  rubbing,  to  which  he  had  unfortunately  been  pre- 
vailed to  submit  some  days  before.  For  fully  an  hour  we  talked 
together  on  these  and  other  subjects,  and  I  left  liim  with  no  appre- 
hension of  impending  evil,  and  little  doubting  but  that  a  short  time 
of  rest  and  regimen  would  restore  him  to  his  wonted  vigor."  It  was 
a  cheerful  hour  that  thus  was  passed,  and  his  wife  and  family  par- 
took of  the  hopeful  feeling  with  which  his  kind  friend.  Professor 
]VIiller,  had  parted  with  him.  It  was  now  near  the  dinner  hour,  and 
the  servant  entered  the  room  to  spread  th«  table.     She  found  Mr. 


12  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

Miller  in  the  room  alone.  Another  of  the  paroxysms  was  on  him. 
His  face  was  such  a  picture  of  horror  that  she  shrunk  in  terror  from 
the  sight.  He  flung  himself  on  the  sofa,  and  buried  his  head,  as  if 
in  agony,  upon  the  cusliion.  Again,  however,  the  vision  flitted  by, 
and  left  him  in  perfect  health.  The  evening  was  spent  quietly  with 
his  family.  During  tea  he  employed  himself  in  reading  aloud  Cow- 
per's  "  Castaway,"  the  Sonnet  on  Mary  Unwin,  and  one  of  his  more 
playful  pieces,  for  the  special  pleasure  of  his  children.  Having  cor-' 
rected  some  proofs  of  the  forthcoming  volume,  he  went  up  stairs  to 
his  study.  At  the  appointed  hour  he  had  taken  the  bath,  but 
unfortunately  his  natural  and  peculiar  repugnance  to  physic  had 
induced  him  to  leave  untaken  the  medicine  that  had  been  prescribed. 
He  had  retired  into  his  sleeping-room, — a  small  apartment  opening 
out  of  his  study,  and  which,  for  some  time  past,  in  consideration  of 
the  delicate  state  of  his  wife's  health,  and  the  irregularity  of  his  own 
hours  of  study,  he  occupied  at  night  alone, — and  lain  sometime 
upon  the  bed.  The  horrible  trance,  more  horrible  than  ever,  must 
have  returned.  All  that  can  now  be  known  of  what  followed  is  to 
be  gathered  from  the  facts,  that  next  morning  liis  body,  half  dressed, 
was  found  lying  lifeless  on  the  floor,  the  feet  upon  the  .study  rug,  the 
chest  pierced  with  the  ball  of  the  revolver  pistol,  which  was  found 
lying  in  the  bath  that  stood  close  by.*  The  deadly  bullet  had  perfor- 
ated the  left  lung,  grazed  the  heart,  cut  through  the  pulmonary 

The  same  revolver  proved  to  be  the  instrument  of  death  to  another  person, 
two  days  after.  The  circumstances  are  thus  related  in  the  Edinburgh  Witness  of 
December  27 :  — 

"  A  most  melancholy  event,  arising  out  of  the  following  circumstances,  occurred 
yesterday  in  the  shop  of  Mr.  Thomson,  gunmaker.  In  the  beginning  of  July,  last 
year,  Mr.  Hugh  Miller  bought  a  six-shot  revolving  chamber  pistol,  size  of  bull 
ninety-two  to  the  j)ound,  from  the  late  firm  of  Messrs.  Alexander  Thomson  &  Son, 
gunmakers,  16  Union  I'lace.  A  few  days  alter,  he  called  and  said  he  thought  it 
a  little  stiff  in  its  workings,  and  got  it  made  to  revolve  more  readily.  The  pistol 
has  not  been  seen  by  Mr.  Thomson  since  then ;  but  in  his  absence  a  few  minutes 
at  dinner  yesterday,  Professor  Miller  called  about  twenty  minutes  from  two,  and 
asked  Mr.  Thomson's  foreman  how  many  of  the  six  shots  bad  been  fired.  He 
added,  '  Mind,  it  is  loaded.'  The  foreman,  instead  of  removing  the  breech  or 
chamber  to  examine  it,  had  incautiously  turned  the  pistol  entire  towards  his  own 
person,  and  lifting  up  the  hammer  with  his  fingers,  while  he  counted  the  remain- 
ing loaded  chambers,  he  must  have  slipped  his  fingers  while  the  pistol  was  turned 
to  his  own  bead.  It  exploded,  and  the  ball  lodging  in  the  angle  of  his  right  eye, 
he  fell  back  a  lifeless  corpse.  The  pistol  is  a  bolted  one,  which  permits  of  being 
carried  loaded  with  perfect  safety.  Having  been  wet  internally,  rust  may  have 
stopped  the  action  of  the  bolt.  It  is  a  singular  fact  that  Hugh  Miller  dropped  the 
pistfil  into  the  bath,  where  it  remained  for  several  hours.  This  may  account  for 
the  apparent  incautiou  of  Mr.  Thomson's  foreman." 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH     MILLER.  lo 

artery  at  its  root,  and  lodged  in  the  rib  in  the  right  side.  Death 
must  have  been  instantaneous.  The  servant  by  Avhom  the  body  was 
first  discovered,  acting  with  singular  discretion,  gave  no  alarm,  but 
went  instantly  in  search  of  the  doctor  and  minister;  and  on  the 
latter  the  melancholy  duty  Avas  devolved  of  breaking  the  fearful 
intelligence  to  that  now  broken-hearted  widow,  over  whose  bitter 
sorrow  it  becomes  us  to  draw  the  veil.  The  body  was  lifted  and 
laid  upon  the  bed.  We  saw  it  there  a  few  hours  afterwards.  The 
head  lay  back  sideways  on  the  pillow.  There  was  the  massive  brow, 
the  firm-set,  manly  features,  we  had  so  often  looked  upon  admiringly, 
just  as  we  had  lately  seen  them,  —  no  touch  nor  trace  upon  them  of 
disease, — nothing  but  that  overspread  pallor  of  death  to  distinguish 
them  from  what  they  had  been.  But  the  expression  of  that  counte- 
nance in  death  will  live  in  our  memory  foi-ever.  Death  by  gunshot 
wounds  is  said  to  leave  no  trace  of  suffering  beliind ;  and  never  was 
there  a  face  of  the  dead  freer  from  all  shadow  of  pain,  or  grief,  or 
conflict,  than  that  of  our  dear  departed  friend.  And  as  we  bent 
over  it,  and  remembered  the  troubled  look  it  sometimes  had  in  life, 
and  thought  what  must  have  been  the  sublimely  terrific  expression 
that  it  wore  at  the  moment  when  the  fatal  deed  was  done,  we  could 
not  help  thinking  that  it  lay  there  to  tell  us,  in  that  expression  of 
miruffled,  majestic  repose  that  sat  upon  every  feature,  what  we  so 
assuredly  believe,  that  the  spirit  had  passed  through  a  terrible  torna- 
do, in  which  reason  had  been  broken  down  ;  but  that  it  had  made 
the  great  passage  in  safety,  and  stood  looking  back  to  us,  in  humble, 
grateful  triumph,  from  the  other  side. 

On  looking  round  the  room  in  which  the  body  had  been  discov- 
ered, a  folio  sheet  of  paper  was  seen  lying  on  the  table.  On  the 
centre  of  the  page  the  following  lines  were  written, — the  last  which 
that  pen  was  ever  to  trace  :  — 

"  Dearkst  Lydia, — My  brain  burns.  I  must  have  walked;  and 
a  fearful  dream  rises  upon  me.  I  cannot  bear  the  horrible  thought. 
God  and  Father  of  the  LorS  Jesus  Christ  have  mercy  upon  me. 
Dearest  Lydia,  dear  children,  farewell.  My  brain  burns  as  the  rec- 
ollection grows.   3Iy  dear,  dear  wife,  farewell." 

Hugh  Miller. 

^Vhat  a  legacy  of  love  to  a  broken-hearted  family  !  and  to  us,  and 
all  who  loved  him,  how  pleasing  to  observe,  that  in  that  bewildering 
hour,  when  the  horror  of  that  great  darkness  came  down  upon  that 
2 


14  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

noble  spirit,  and  soine  hideous,  shapeless  phantom  overpowered  it, 
and  took  from  it  even  the  capacity  to  discern  the  right  from  the 
■wrong,  humility,  and  faith,  and  affection,  still  kept  their  hold ;  — 
amid  the  ruins  of  the  intellect,  that  tender  heart  remaining  still  un- 
broken !  These  last  lines  remain  as  the  surest  evidence  of  the  mys- 
terious power  that  laid  his  spirit  prostrate,  and  of  the  noble  elements 
of  which  that  spirit  was  composed, — humble,  and  reverent,  and  lov- 
ing to  the  last. 

Yesterday,  at  the  request  of  friends,  and  imder  the  authority  ol 
the  Procurator-Fiscal,  a  j^ost  Diortem  examination  of  the  body  took 
place.     We  subjoin  the  result :  — 

"Edixbuugh,  December  26,  1856. 

We  hereby  certify,  on  soul  and  conscience,  that  we  have  this  day 

examined  the  body  of  Mr.  Hugh  Miller,  at  Shrub  Mount,  Portobello. 

"  The  cause  of  death  we  found  to  be  a  ^jistol-shot  through  the  left 

side  of  the  chest ;  and  this,  we  are  satisfied,  was  inflicted  by  his  own 

hand. 

"  From  the  diseased  appearances  found  in  the  brain,  taken  in 
connection  with  the  history  of  the  case,  we  have  no  doubt  that  the 
let  was  suicidal  under  the  impulse  of  insanity." 

James  Miller,      W.  T.  Gairdner, 
A.  H.  Balfour,     A.  M.  Edwards. 

We  must  ask  to  be  excused  from  attempting  any  analysis  of  Mr 
Miller's  character  and  genius,  or  any  estimate  of  the  distinguished 
services  he  has  rendered  to  literature,  science,  and  the  Christian 
faith.  His  loss  is  too  heavy  a  one,  —  his  removal  has  come  upon  us 
too  suddenly  and  too  awfully  for  mind  or  hand  to  be  steady  enough 
"or  such  a  task.  The  voice  of  the  public  press  has  already  told  what 
a  place  he  had  Avon  for  himself  in  the  admiration  and  affection  of 
his  countrymen ;  and  for  the  delicate  and  tender  way  in  which  the 
manner  of  his  departure  has  universally  been  alluded  to,  were  we 
permitted  to  speak  in  the  name  of  Mr.  Miller's  friends,  we  should 
''-xpress  our  deepest  gratitude.  It  is  a  beautiful  and  worthy  tribute 
vxiat  his  brother  journalists  have  rendered  to  the  memory  of  one  who 
was  a  laborer  along  Avith  them  in  elevating  the  talent  and  tone  of 
our  newspaper  literature. 

As  Free  Churchmen,  however,  it  would  be  unpardonable  were  we 
'o  omit  all  reference,  at  such  a  time  as  this,  to  what  he  did  on  behalf 
of  the  church  of  his  adoption.     Dr.  Chalmers  did  not  err  when,  self 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER.  15 

oblivious,  he  spake  of  ]\Ir.  IMIllcr,  as  he  so  often  did,  as  the  greatest 
Scotchman  alive  after  Sir  AValter  Scott's  death,  and  as  the  man  who 
had  done  more  than  all  others  to  defend  and  make  popular  through- 
out the  country  the  non-intrusion  cause.  We  know  well  what  the 
mutual  love  and  veneration  was  of  those  two  great  men  for  one 
another  whilst  living;  and  now  that  both  are  gone,  —  and  hereafter 
Ave  believe  still  more  so  than  even  now,  —  their  two  names  will  be 
intertwined  in  the  grateful  and  admiring  remembrance  of  the  minis- 
ters and  members  of  the  Free  Church.  It  was  the  high  honor  of  the 
writer  of  these  hurried  lines  to  record  the  part  taken  by  his  vener- 
ated relative  in  that  crreat  ecclesiastical  stru^ffle  Avhich  terminated  in 
the  Disruption.  At  that  time  it  was  matter  to  him  of  great  regret 
that,  as  his  office  was  that  of  the  biographer,  and  not  of  the  histo- 
rian, there  did  not  occur  those  natural  opportunities  of  speaking  of 
the  part  taken  by  ]\Ir.  ]\Iiller  in  that  struggle,  of  which  he  ghadly 
would  have  availed  himself  And  he  almost  wishes  now  that  he  had 
violated  what  appeared  to  him  to  be  his  duty,  in  order  to  create  such 
an  opportunity.  He  feels  as  if  in  this  he  had  done  some  injustice  to 
the  dead,  —  an  injustice  which  it  Avould  gratify  him  beyond  measure 
if  he  could  noAV  in  any  way  repair,  by  expressing  it  as  his  own  judg- 
ment, and  the  judgment  of  the  vast  body  of  his  Church,  that,  next 
to  the  writings  and  actings  of  Dr.  Chalmers,  the  leading  articles  of 
Mr.  Miller  in  this  journal  did  more  than  anything  else  to  give  the 
Free  Church  the  place  it  holds  in  the  affections  of  so  many  of  our 
felloAv-countrymen. 

But  Mr.  Miller  was  far  more  than  a  Free  Churchman,  and  did  for 
the  Christianity  of  his  country  and  the  Avorld  a  far  higher  service 
than  any  which  in  that  simple  character  and  office  was  rendered  by 
him.  There  was  nothing  in  him  of  the  spirit  and  temper  of  the  sec- 
tarian. He  breathed  too  broad  an  atmosphere  to  live  and  move 
within  such  narroAv  bounds.  In  the  heat  of  the  conflict  there  may 
have  been  too  much  occasionally  of  the  partisan  ;  and  in  the  pleasure 
that  the  sweep  and  stroke  of  his  intellectual  tomahawk  gave  to  him 
who  wielded  it,  he  may  have  forgotten  at  times  the  pain  inflicted 
where  it  fell ;  but  let  his  writings  before  and  after  the  Disruption  be 
now  consulted,  and  it  will  be  found  that  it  was  mainly  because  of 
his  firm  belief,  whether  ri<j;ht  or  wrong,  that  the  interests  of  vital  ffodli- 
ness  were  wrapped  up  in  it,  that  he  took  his  stand,  and  played  his 
conspicuous  part,  in  the  ecclesiastical  conflict.  It  is  well  known  that 
for  some  time  past,  —  for  reasons  to  which  it  would  be  altogether  un- 
seasonable to  allude, —  he  has  ceased  to  take  any  active  part  in 


16  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

ecclesiastical  affairs.  He  had  retired  even,  in  a  great  measure,  from 
the  field  of  ceneral  literature,  to  devote  himself  to  the  studv  of  Ge- 
ology.  His  past  labors  in  this  depai'tment,  —  enough  to  give  him  a 
high  and  honored  place  among  its  most  distinguished  cultivators, — • 
he  looked  upon  but  as  his  training  for  the  great  life-work  he  had 
marked  out  for  himself,— the  full  investigation  and  illustration  of  the 
Geology  of  Scotland.  He  had  lai-ge  materials  already  collected  for 
this  work ;  and  it  was  his  intention,  after  completing  that  volume 
which  has  happily  been  left  in  so  finished  a  state,  to  set  himself  to 
their  arrangement.  The  friends  of  science  in  many  lands  will  mourn 
over  the  incompleted  project  which,  however  ably  it  may  hereafter 
be  accomplished  by  another,  it  were  vain  to  hope  shall  ever  be  so 
accomplished  as  it  should  have  been  by  one  who  united  in  himself  the 
power  of  accurate  observation,  of  logical  deduction,  of  broad  gen- 
eralization, and  of  pictorial  and  poetic  representation.  But  the 
fiiends  of  Christianity  cannot  regret,  that  since  it  was  the  mysteri- 
ous decree  of  Heaven  that  he  should  prematurely  fall,  —  his  work 
as  a  pure  Geologist  not  half  done,  —  he  should  have  been  led  aside 
by  the  publication  of  the  Vestiges  of  Creation  to  that  track  of  semi- 
theolorrical,  semi-scientific  research  to  which  his  later  studies  and 
later  writings  have  been  devoted.  That,  as  it  now  seems  to  us,  was 
the  great  work  which  it  was  given  him  on  earth  to  do, —  to  illustrate 
the  perfect  harmony  of  all  that  science  tells  us  of  the  physical  struc- 
ture and  history  of  our  globe,  with  all  that  the  Bible  tells  of  the 
creation  and  government  of  this  earth  by  and  through  Christ  Jesus 
our  Lord.  The  establishment  and  exhibition  of  that  harmony  was  a 
task  to  which  is  it  too  much  to  say  that  there  was  no  man  living  so 
competent  as  he  ?  We  leave  it  to  the  future  to  declare  how  much 
he  has  done  by  his  writings  to  fulfil  that  task  ;  but  mourning,  as  we 
now  can  only  do,  over  his  sad  and  melancholy  death,  —  to  that  very 
death,  with  all  the  tragic  circumstances  that  surround  it,  we  would 
point  as  the  closing  sacrifice  offered  on  the  altar  of  our  faith.  His 
very  intellect,  his  reason,  —  God's  most  precious  gift,  —  a  gift  dearer 
than  life,  —  perished  in  the  great  endeavor  to  harmonize  the  works 
and  word  of  the  Eternal.  A  most  inscrutable  event,  that  such  an 
intellect  should  have  been  suffered  to  go  to  wreck  through  too  eager 
a  prosecution  of  such  a  work.  But  amid  the  mystery,  which  we 
cannot  penetrate,  our  love,  and  our  veneration,  and  our  grafitiule, 
toward  that  so  highly  gifted  and  truly  Christian  man  shall  only  grow 
the  deeper  because  of  the  cloud  and  the  whirlwind  in  which  he  has 
been  borne  off  from  our  side. 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER.  17 

On  the  31st  of  December,  two  days  after  the  obsequies 
had  been  performed,  Dr.  Hanna  resumed  the  subject  in  the  fol- 
lowing elevated  strain : 

We  have  still  but  little  heart  to  dilate  on  any  political  or  literary 
topic.  Our  thoughts  can  dwell  on  but  one  thrice  melancholy  event. 
Need  we  name  that  event  ?  Alas,  no !  It  had  occurred  but  a  few 
hours  when  the  tidings  of  it  struck  our  city  with  stunning,  stupefying, 
and  deeply  saddening  blow.  It  has  already  thrilled  our  whole  land; 
and  is  on  its  way,  through  a  hundred  channels,  to  the  west,  to  the 
east,  and  to  the  south,  carrying  with  it  mourning  and  lamentation 
throughout  the  vast  area  which  is  covered  by  the  language  in  which 
Huo-h  Miller  wrote.  Writing,  as  it  were,  amid  the  deep  shadows  of 
the  funeral  chamber,  and  brought  in  a  manner  into  the  very  pres- 
ence of  the  dead,  Ave  are  made  strongly  to  feel,  and  we  daresay  our 
readers  to  a  large  extent  will  feel,  too,  the  nothingness  of  those  dis- 
cussions which  usually  occupy  and  engross  men.  The  weightier 
matter  that  ever  occupied  the  wisdom  of  cabinet  or  the  pen  of  jour- 
nalist appears  verily  but  fleeting  and  transitory,  when  brought  thus 
into  prominent  contrast  with  the  awful  realities  of  human  existence 
and  destiny ;  and  it  is  only  when  reflection  shows  us  that  these  mat- 
ters are  yet  parts  of  a  grand  Providential  scheme,  embracing  man's 
happiness  now,  and  entering  deeply  into  the  question  of  his  future 
and  eternal  well-being,  that  we  can  see  in  them  that  amount  of  sig- 
nificance and  importance  which  they  really  possess. 

From  the  firmament  of  British  literature  and  science  a  great  light 
has  departed.  But  yesterday  we  rejoiced  in  its  beams,  and  now  it 
has  set  all  suddenly 'and  forever;  and  to  us  there  remains  but  the 
melancholy  task  of  bewailing  its  departure,  and  tracing  very  hastily 
and  imperfectly  its  track.  The  intellectual  powers  of  Hugh  Miller 
had  certainly  not  declined.  He  was  marked  to  the  very  last  by  that 
wonderful  robustness  of  mind  which  had  characterized  him  all 
through  life.  His  sense  was  as  manly,  his  judgment  as  sound  and 
comprehensive,  his  penetration  as  discriminating  and  deep,  his  im- 
agination as  vigorous  and  bold,  and  his  taste  as  pure  and  trusty,  as 
they  had  ever  been.  The  whole  of  his  great  powers  were  found 
working  together  up  to  the  last  week  of  his  earthly  career,  with  their 
usually  calm,  noiseless  strength,  and  finely  balanced  and  exquisitely 
toned  harmony.  We  have  evidence  of  this  fact  under  his  own  hand 
in  recent  numbers  of  the  Witness.  His  last  two  articles  were,  the 
one  on  Russia,  and  the  other  on  our  modern  poets.  The  former,  — • 
2* 


18  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

that  on  the  resources  of  the  Russian  empire,  —  is  characterized  by 
the  same  wide  range  of  thinking,  the  same  skill  in  analysis,  and  the 
same  power  of  grouping  and  arran^ng  details,  and  making  them  to 
throw  light  on  some  great  principle,  wliich  usually  marked  and  noti- 
fied his  hand  when  employed  on  such  subjects.     The  latter,  —  that 
on  the  poets,  —  is  rich  and  genial  as  usual,  betokening  a  full  and 
unclouded  recollection  of  all  his  early  reading  in  that  department  of 
our  literature,  abounding  in  the  finest  touches  of  pathos  and  beauty, 
and  redolent  -\vith  a  most  generous  sympathy  with  kindred  genius. 
It  is  not  inconsistent  with  what  we  have  now  stated,  and  it  is  the  fact, 
that  latterly  the  inroads  of  disease,  which  had  entrenched  itself  deep- 
ly in  a  constitution  originally  strong,  and  which  kept  steadily  ad- 
vancing upon  the  vital  powers,  had  come  so  near  the  seat  of  the 
mind,  that  for  short  intervals  the  noble  spirit  was  sadly  beclouded, 
and  its  moral  and  intellectual  action  momentarily  suspended.     But, 
apart  from  this,  there  seemed  ground  to  believe  that  there  was  yet 
before  Mr.  IVliller  much  honorable  and  noble  labor.     The  strong 
man,  after  all  his  tasks,  appeared  to  be  still  sti-ong.     His  powers 
were  mellowng  into  richness  and  calm,  matured  strength ;  his  con- 
ceptions of  great  principles  were  growing  yet  wider ;  his  store  of 
facts,  literary  as  well  as  scientific,  was  accumulating  with  every  busy 
and  laborious  year  that  passed  over  him  ;  and  there  did  seem  ground 
to  expect  from  his  pen,  unrivalled  among  his  contemporaries  in  its 
exquisite  purity  and  calm  power,  many  a  deep  thoughted  article,  and 
many   a   profoundly  reasoned  and  richly  illustrated  volume.      We 
looked  to  him  for  the  solution  of  many  a  dark  question  in  science ; 
and  we  certainly  hoped,  from  that  fine  union  of  science  and  theol- 
ogy which  dwelt  in  him  above  all  men,  for  a  yet  fuller  and  more 
complete  adjustment  of  the  two  great  records  of  Creation,  —  that  of 
the  Rocks,  and  that  of  Moses.     But  alas !  all  these  hopes  have  sud- 
denly failed  us.     It  seemed  right  otherwise  to  the  Great  Disposer  of 
all.  ■   He  has  said  to  his  faithful  servant,  "  Enough." 

Let  us  look  back  upon  that  work.  We  by  no  means  aim  at  givmg 
a  calm,  well  weighed,  and  deeply  pondered  estimate  of  it,  but  only 
such  a  glance  as  the  circumstances  permit  and  require.  His  great 
and  special  work  was  his  advocacy  of  the  principles  of  the  Free 
Church.  Mr.  Miller  was  par  excellence  the  popular  expounder  and 
defender  of  these  principles,  whether  in  their  cmbryotic  state  in  the 
Non-Intrusion  party,  or  as  embodied  in  the  fully  developed  and 
iompletely  emancipated  Free  Protesting  Church  of  Scotland.  For 
this  service,  in  connection  with  which  he  would  have  best  liked  to  be 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER.  19 

remembered,  as  he  best  deserved  it,  he  had  unconsciously  been  un- 
dergoing a  course  of  preparation  even  when  a  boy.  He  himself  has 
told  us  with  what  eagerness  he  devoured,  at  that  pe'riod  of  life,  the 
legendary  histories  of  Wallace  and  Bruce ;  and  the  occupation  had 
its  use.  It  gave  him  a  capacity  for  admiring  what  was  great  though 
perilous  in  exploit,  and  for  truly  and  largely  sympathizing  with  what 
was  patriotic  and  self-sacrificing  in  character;  and  so  it  created  a 
groundwork  for  his  own  future  thinking  and  acting.  The  admira- 
tion he  then  bore  to  these  earliest  of  our  "  Scottish  Worthies,"  who 
vindicated  on  Bannockburn,  and  kindred  fields,  Scotland's  right  to 
be  an  independent  and  free  country,  he  afterwards  transferred  to 
our  later  "  Worthies,"  whom  he  revered  as  greater  still.  Jsot  that  he 
ever  lost  his  admiration  of  the  former,  or  ceased  to  value  the  incal- 
culable services  they  rendered  to  the  Scottish  nation ;  but  that  he 
regarded  Knox  and  Melville  as  men  occupying  a  yet  higher  plat- 
form,—  as  gifted  with  a  yet  deeper  insight  into  their  country's 
■n^ants,  —  as,  in  sliort,  carrying  forward  and  consummating  the  glo- 
rious task  which  AVallace  and  Bruce  had  but  begun.  He  saw  that 
unless  our  reformers  had  come  after  our  heroes,  planting  schools, 
founding  colleges,  and,  above  all,  imparting  to  their  countrymen  a 
scriptural  and  rational  faith,  in  vain  had  Bruce  unsheathed  his 
sword,  —  in  vain  had  Wallace  laid  down  his  life.  Wallace  and 
Bruce  had  created  an  independent  country  ;  Knox  and  Melville  had 
created  an  independent  people.  They  were  the  creators  of  the  Scot- 
tish nation, —  the  real  enfranchisers  of  our  people  ;  and  it  was  this 
that  tauaht  ]\Ir.  iSIiller  to  venerate  these  men  so  profoundh',  and  that 
made  him  in  his  inmost  soul  a  devoted  follower,  and  to  the  utmost 
extent  of  his  great  faculties  a  defender,  of  their  cause.  He  was  a 
soldier  from  love,  —  pure,  heroic,  chivalrous  devotion  soai-ing  infi- 
nitely above  the  partisan.  He  saw  that  the  Church  of  Scotland 
was  the  creator  of  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  people  of  Scot- 
land, —  that  she  was  the  grand  palladium  of  the  country's  liberties,— 
that  while  she  stood  an  independent  and  free  institution,  the  people 
stood  an  independent  and  free  nation,  —  and  that  bonds  to  her  meant 
slavery  to  them.  Therefore  did  he  gird  on  the  sword  when  he  saw 
peril  gathering  around  her.  The  privileges,  —  the  entire  standing 
of  the  common  people,  as  given  them  by  the  Reformation, —  he  saw 
to  be  in  danger :  he  was  "  one  of  themselves ; "  and  he  felt  and 
fouffht  as  if  almost  the  quarrel  had  been  a  personal  one,  and  the 
question  at  issue  his  own  liberty  or  slavery.  How  richly  equipped 
and  nobly  armed  he  came  into  the  field,  we  need  not  here  state. 


20  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

What  flilness  yet  precision  of  ecclesiastical  lore,  —  what  strength 
and  conclusiveness  of  argument,  —  what  flashes  of  humor,  wit,  and 
sarcasm,  —  and  in  what  a  luminous  yet  profoundly  philosophical 
light  did  he  set  the  great  principles  involved  in  the  controversy, 
making  them  patent  in  the  very  cottages  of  our  land,  and  so  fixing 
them  in  the  understandings  of  the  very  humblest  of  our  people,  that 
they  never  afterwards  could  be  either  misunderstood  or  forgotten ! 
It  was  thus  that  the  way  Avas  prepared  for  the  great  result  of  the 
18th  of  May,  1843. 

Of  Mr.  Miller,  as  a  man  of  science  and  a  public  journalist,  we 
cannot  speak  at  present  at  any  length.  In  him  the  love  of  science 
was  deeply  seated  and  early  developed.  The  first  arena  on  which 
he  appeared  —  obscure  and  humble  as  it  was  —  afforded  him  special 
opportunities  of  initiating  himself  into  what  to  him  was  then,  and 
continued  ever  afterwards  to  be,  a  most  fascinating  study.  The  study 
of  geology  was  eagerly  prosecuted  amid  the  multifarious  duties,  and 
during  the  brief  pauses,  of  a  busy  life.  Several  original  discoveries 
rewarded  his  patient  and  laborious  investigations.  He  succeeded  at 
length  in  placing  his  name  in  the  first  rank  of  British  scientific  think- 
ers and  writers.  His  works  are  characterized  by  a  fine  union  of 
strict  science,  classic  diction,  and  enchanting  description,  which  rises 
not  unfrequently  into  the  loftiest  vein  of  poetry.  The  fruits  of  his 
researches  were  ever  made  to  bear  upon  the  defence  and  elucidation 
of  the  Oracles  of  Truth.  Our  common  Christianity  owes  much  to 
his  pen.  Viewing  him  as  a  journalist,  Mr.  Miller  not  only  excelled 
in  article  writing,  —  tlie  most  difficult  of  all  kinds  of  composition, — 
but,  as  will  be  generally  admitted,  he  has  introduced  a  new  era  into 
newspaper  writing.  If  the  moral  tone  of  our  newspaper  press  is 
higher  now  than  it  Avas  twenty-five  years  ago,  we  have  Mr.  Miller  in 
large  degree  to  thank  for  it ;  and  to  him,  too,  is  to  be  traced  that 
purer  style  and  more  philosophic  spirit  which  begins  to  be  discern- 
ible in  the  columns  of  our  public  journals. 

But  the  character  in  which  his  personal  friends  will  deplore  him 
most,  and  will  most  frequently  recall  his  memory,  will  be  that  of  the 
man.  How  meek  and  gentle  he  Avas  !  —  how  unpretending  and  mod- 
est, even  as  a  very  child  !  —  hcAv  true  and  steady  in  friendship  !  — 
how  wise  and  playful  his  mirth !  —  how  ripened  and  chastened  his 
wisdom !  —  how  ready  to  counsel !  —  how  willing  to  oblige  !  —  how 
generous  and  large  his  sympathies !  No  little  jealousies,  no  fretful 
envyings,  had  he !  Even  in  opposition,  how  noble  and  manly  waa 
he :  if  a  powerful,  he  Avas  a  fair  and  open  antagonist ;  and  whatCA'er 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER.  21 

hard  blows  were  deal*;,  they  were  dealt  in  his  own  journal.  Wg 
Itive  seen  him  in  various  moods  and  in  all  circumstances ;  but  never 
did  we  hear  him  uttor  an  unkind  or  disparap;inji  word  of  man.  He 
was,  too,  a  sincere  and  humble  Christian  ;  and  the  lively  faith  which 
he  cherished  in  the  adorable  Redeemer  and  his  all-efficacious  sacri- 
fice, bore  abundantly  its  good  fruits  in  a  life  including  no  ordinary 
variety  of  condition  and  trial,  and  running  on  to  such  teem  as  to 
make  abundantly  manifest  what  manner  of  man  he  was. 

The  article  which  follows  is  from  the  Edinburgh  News.  It 
is  evidently  from  the  pen  of  one  who  was  intimately  acquainted 
with  Hugh  Miller,  and  is  worthy  of  attention,  not  only  for  its 
eloquent  and  discriminating  notices  of  his  works,  but  also  for 
its  statements  respecting  his  great  designs,  never,  alas,  to  be 
accomplished. 

It  is  not  many  months  since  we  chronicled  the  death  of  the  great- 
est of  living  Scotsmen,  and  the  prince  of  modern  philosophers  — 
Sir  William  Hamilton.  These  last  few  days  have  bereft  us  of  an- 
other of  our  countrymen  not  less  illustrious,  and  known  all  over  the 
world  as  one  of  the  princes  of  geology.  We  cannot  well  estimate 
the  loss  which  society  sustains  in  the  death  of  Mr.  ]\Iiller.  He  occu- 
pied a  foremost  place  among  us,  and  there  is  none  on  whom  his  man- 
tle can  fall.  In  the  world  of  letters  his  name  takes  high  rank,  for 
undoubtedly  he  was  one  of  the  ablest  writers  in  our  literature. 
Who  can  have  read  without  delight  his  manly,  vigorous  language, 
.soaring  sometimes  into  the  highest  eloquence,  anon  plunging  into 
the  depths  of  metaphysical  argument,  or  grappling  with  the  dry  tech- 
nicalities of  science,  yet  ever  rolling  along  with  the  same  easy,  on- 
ward flow  V  His  style  has  all  the  charm  of  Goldsmith's  sweetness, 
with  the  infusion  of  a  rich  vigor  that  gives  it  an  air  of  great  origi- 
nality. He  is  one  of  the  few  writers  who  have  successfully  conjoined 
the  graces  of  literature  with  the  formal  details  of  science,  and  whose 
works  are  perused  for  their  literary  excellences,  independently  al- 
together of  their  scientific  merit.  His  writings  will  ever  be  regarded 
among  the  classics  of  the  English  language.  For  obvious  reason.^ 
we  pass  over  his  editori  d  labors.  It  is  on  the  republic  of  science 
that  his  death  will  fall  most  heavily.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
he  has  done  more  to  popularize  his  favorite  department  than  any 
other  writer      Of  aJU  geological  works,  his  enjoy,  perhaps,  the  widest 


22  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH     MILLER. 

circulation  —  not  in  this  country,  merely,  but  all  over  the  world,  and 
especially  in  the  United  States.  His  reputation,  however,  does  not 
rest  solely  on  his  standing  as  an  exponent  of  science  to  the  people ; 
he  was  himself  an  original  and  accurate  observer.  When  the  infant 
science  of  geology  was  battling  for  existence  against  the  opposing 
phalanx  of  united  Christendom,  Hugh  Miller,  then  a  mere  lad,  was 
quietly  working  as  a  stone-mason  in  the  north  of  Scotland,  and  em- 
ploying his  leisure  time  among  the  fossil  fishes  of  the  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone, and  the  ammonites  and  the  belemnites  of  the  Lias,  that 
abound  in  the  neighborhood  of  Cromarty.  As  years  rolled  slowly 
away,  he  continued  his  observations,  and  when  at  length,  in  1841, 
the  results  were  given  to  the  world  in  his  well  known  "  Old  Red 
Sandstone,"  every  one  was  charmed  with  the  novelty  and  beauty  of 
the  style,  and  his  reputation  as  a  writer  was  at  once  established. 
Men  of  science,  however,  though  acknowledging  the  graphic  and 
elegant  diction  of  his  descriptions,  had  some  doubts  as  to  their  truth- 
fulness. Indeed,  by  some  geologists  tliey  were  cast  aside  as  fanciful, 
and  other  restorations  of  the  Old  Red  fishes  were  proposed  and 
adopted.  Those  who  are  acquainted  with  Old  Red  ichthyolites, 
or  who  have  had  the  pleasure  of  examining  the  exquisite  series  in  Mr. 
Miller's  collection,  may  well  smile  at  the  absurdity  of  the  restora- 
tions that  were  adopted.  Yet  some  of  these  found  their  way  into  a 
work  of  no  little  popularity,  —  Mantell's  "  Medals  of  Creation."  It 
is  sufficient  to  state  that  the  drawings  there  given  bear  no  resem- 
blance to  anything  in  the  heavens  above  or  on  the  earth  beneath,  or 
in  the  waters  under  the  earth,  nor  to  any  fossil  organism  that  has 
ever  been  discovered.  At  length  the  progress  of  investigation  led 
to  the  discarding  of  these  monsti-osities,  and  Miller's  restorations 
were  returned  to,  as,  after  all,  the  true  ones.  "  The  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone "  formed  an  era  in  the  history  of  fossil  geology.  That  forma- 
tion had  hitherto  been  regarded  as  well  nigh  barren  of  organic 
remains ;  but  Mr.  Miller  demonstrated  that  it  contains  at  least  three 
successive  stages,  each  characterized  by  a  suite  of  uncouth  and  hith- 
erto unknown  fishes.  A  few  years  later  he  published  his  "  Foot- 
prints of  the  Creator."  This  is  undoubtedly  his  chtf-d'ceuvre,  exhibit- 
ing, as  it  does,  the  full  powers  of  his  massive  intellect  and  his  poetic 
imagination.  As  a  piece  of  scientific  investigation  and  research,  it 
is  of  a  very  high  order ;  as  a  reply  to  the  crudities  of  the  develop- 
ment theory,  it  is  unanswerable ;  and  as  a  contribution  to  our  phys- 
ico-theological  literature,  it  ranks,  with  Chalmers'  "  Astronomical 
Lectures,"  among  the  finest  in  this  or  any  other  language.     Some 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER.  23 

of  the  ideas  are  as  profound  as  they  are  original,  opening  up  a  new 
field  of  thought,  which  it  was  doubtless  the  intention  of  the  deceased 
himself  to  cultivate.  Ilis  publislied  works,  however,  contain  but  a 
fraction  of  the  labors  of  his  lifetime.  For  many  years  past  he  has 
been  one  of  the  most  energetic  members  of  the  Royal  Physical  So- 
ciety, at  whose  meetings  he  from  time  to  time  made  known  the  prog- 
ress of  his  researches.  Were  these  papers  collected,  they  would  form 
several  goodly  volumes.  But  their  author  studiously  refrained  from 
publishing  them,  save  occasionally  in  the  columns  of  the  Witness 
newspaper.  It  was  his  intention  that  they  should  each  form  a  part 
of  the  great  work  of  his  life,  to  which  for  many  years  his  leisure 
moments  had  been  devoted.  His  design  Avas  to  combine  the  results 
j)f  all  his  labors  among  the  different  rock  formations  of  Scotland  into 
one  grand  picture  of  the  geological  history  of  our  country.  For  this 
end  he  had  explored  a  large  part  of  the  Scottish  counties,  anxious  that 
his  statements  should  rest  as  far  as  possible  upon  the  authority  of  his 
own  personal  investigations.  His  knowledge  of  the  geology  of  the 
country  was  thus  far  more  extensive  than  was  generally  supposed. 
We  may  refer  particularly  to  that  branch  of  it  on  which  he  bestowed 
the  unremitted  attention  of  his  closing  years,  —  the  palteontological 
history  of  the  glacial  beds,  —  that  strange  and  as  yet  almost  unknown 
period  that  ushered  in  the  existing  creation.  He  studied  it  minutely 
alon"-  the  shores  of  the  Moray  Frith,  on  the  east  coast  of  Scotland, 
alona  the  shores  of  Fife  and  the  Lothians,  and  on  the  coast  of  Ayr- 
shire and  the  Frith  of  Clyde.  This  last  summer  he  made  a  tour 
through  the  centre  of  the  island,  and  obtained  boreal  shells  at  Buch- 
lyvie  in  Stirlingshire,  —  the  omphalos  of  Scotland.  The  importance 
of  this  discovery,  in  connection  with  those  he  had  previously  made 
in  following  out  the  same  chain  of  evidence,  can  only  be  appreciated 
by  those  who  have  paid  some  attention  to  geology.  We  may  state 
briefly  that  it  proves  the  central  area  of  Scotland  to  have  been  sub- 
merged beneath  an  icy  sea,  and  icebergs  to  have  grated  along  over 
what  is  now  the  busy  valley  of  the  Forth  and  Clyde,  while  the 
waters  were  tenanted  by  shells  at  present  found  only  in  the  Northern 
Ocean.  A  large  part  of  his  work  is  written,  though  it  is  to  be  feared 
that  much  knowledge,  amassed  in  the  course  of  its  preparation,  has 
perished  with  him.  In  particular,  there  were  whole  sections  of  his 
Museum  understood  only  by  himself.  Every  little  fragment  had  its 
story,  and  contributed  its  quota  of  evidence  to  the  truth  of  his 
descriptions.  There  is,  perhaps,  but  another  mind  in  Britain, — 
that  of  Sir  Philip  Egerton,  —  that  can  catch  up  the  thread,  and  read 


24  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

off,  though  with  difficulty,  the  meaning  of  those  carefully  arranged 
fragments.  Yet,  even  with  such  aid,  much  must  long,  if  not  forever, 
remain  dark  and  obscure.  The  work  on  which  he  was  more  imme- 
diately engaged  at  the  time  of  his  death  was  partly  theological,  partly 
scientific.  It  was  to  embrace  the  substance  of  some  lectures  lately 
delivered,  and  a  paper  read  last  year  before  the  British  Association 
at  Glasgow  on  the  fossil  plants  collected  by  himself  from  the  Oolite 
and  Old  Re:l  Sandstone  of  Scotland.  It  was  likewise  to  contain  the 
figures  of  some  thirty  or  forty  hitherto  undescribed  species  of  vege- 
tables. We  hope  that,  as  it  was  all  but  ready  for  publication,  it  may 
yet  be  given  to  the  world. 

The  name  of  Hugh  Miller  will  ever  stand  forth  as  synonymous 
with  all  that  is  honest  and  manly ;  as  the  impersonation  of  moral 
courage  and  indomitable  energy ;  as  the  true  ideal  of  a  self-educated 
man.  From  the  humblest  sphere  of  life,  and  from  the  toils  of  a 
stone-mason's  apprentice,  without  means,  without  friends,  without 
other  than  the  most  rudimentary  education,  he  rose,  by  his  own 
unaided  and  unwearied  exertions,  to  fill  one  of  the  brightest  pages 
in  the  annals  of  our  country.  And  when,  in  future  years,  an  exam- 
ple is  sought  of  unconquerable  perseverance,  of  fearless  integrity, 
and  of  earnest,  ceaseless  activity,  the  voice  of  universal  approbation 
shall  proclaim  —  '■^  the  stone-mason  of  Cromurly."  We  have  spoken 
of  this  mournful  event  only  as  a  public  calamity ;  yet,  to  those  who 
were  personally  acquainted  with  the  departed,  it  is  invested  with  no 
ordinary  sadness.  Long,  long  shall  they  remember  the  playful  fancy, 
the  rich  humor,  the  warm,  genial  heart  of  their  friend.  His  simple, 
open  frankness  endeared  him  to  every  one,  though  his  retiring  dis- 
position prevented  him  from  making  many  intimate  friendships.  To 
those  who  enjoyed  this  higher  privilege,  his  death  must  have  caused 
the  most  poignant  regret.  Yet  what  can  even  their  sorrow  be  to 
that  of  the  relatives  of  the  departed  ?  We  lament  the  death  of  one 
who  was  alike  an  honor  to  his  profession,  to  literature,  to  science, 
and  to  his  country,  —  one  of  the  most  loved  and  cherished  of  friends. 
Let  us  not  forget  to  mingle  our  sympathy  and  our  sorrow  with  that 
deeper  grief  that  mourns  the  loss  of  a  husband  and  a  father. 

As  coming  from  a  different  quarter,  and  presenting  a  some- 
what different  view,  the  following,  from  the  London  Literary 
Gazette,  should  have  a  place  here. 

Hugh  Miller  was  born  at  Cromarty  in  1805.  In  his  early  life  he 
worked  as  a  laborer  in  the  Sandstone  quarries  in  his  native  district, 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER.  25 

and  afterwards  as  a  stone-mason  in  diflTerLMit  parts  of  Scotland.  In 
?,  work  published  in  1854,  "My  Schools  and  Schoolmasters,  or  the 
story  of  my  Education,"  Mr.  JNIiller  gives  a  most  interesting  account 
of  his  early  history,  and  of  the  training  and  self-culture  by  which  he 
rose  to  honorable  rank  in  literature  and  science.  Notwithstanding 
the  unpretending  statements  of  this  narrative,  and  the  disavowal  of 
any  other  elements  of  success  than  are  within  ordinary  reach,  every 
reader  of  that  book  feels  tliat  homage  is  due  to  a  genius  original  and 
rare,  as  well  as  to  natural  talents  diligently  and  judiciously  cultivated. 
While  professedly  written  for  the  benefit  of  the  working  classes  of 
his  own  country,  there  are  few  who  may  not  derive  pleasant  and 
profitable  lessons  from  this  most  remarkable  piece  of  autobiography. 
After  being  engaged  in  manual  labor  for  about  fifteen  years,  Mr. 
Miller  was  for  some  time  manager  of  a  bank  that  was  established  in 
his  native  town.  While  in  this  position,  a  pamphlet  that  he  pub- 
lished, on  the  ecclesiastical  controversies  which  then  distracted  Scot- 
land, attracted  the  attention  of  the  leaders  of  the  party  who  now 
form  the  Free  Church,  and  they  invited  him  to  be  editor  of  the 
Witness  newspaper,  then  about  to  be  established  for  the  advocacy  of 
their  principles.  Mr.  ]\liller  had  already  published  a  volume  of 
"  Legendary  Tales  of  Cromarty,"  of  which  the  late  Baron  Ilume, 
nephew  of  the  historian,  himself  a  man  of  much  judgment  and  taste, 
said  it  was  "  written  in  an  English  style,  which  he  had  begun  to 
regard  as  one  of  the  lost  arts."  The  ability  displayed  by  Mr.  Miller 
as  editor  of  the  Wilness,  and  the  influence  exerted  by  him  on  ecclesi- 
astical and  educational  events  in  Scotland,  are  well  known.  ^Ir. 
Miller  did  not  confine  his  newspaper  to  topics  of  local  or  passing 
interest.  In  its  columns  he  made  public  his  geological  observations 
and  researches ;  and  most  of  his  works  originally  appeared  in  the 
form  of  articles  in  that  newspaper.  It  was  in  1840,  the  }ear  at  which 
the  autobiographical  memoir  closes,  that  the  name  of  Hugh  Miller 
first  became  widely  known  beyond  his  own  country. 

At  the  meeting  of  the  British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science  at  Glasgow  that  year.  Sir  Koderick,  then  ]\Ir.  IMurchison, 
gave  an  account  of  the  striking  discoveries  recently  made  in  the  Old 
Red  Sandstone  of  Scotland.  M.  Agassiz,  who  was  present,  pointed 
out  the  peculiarities  and  the  importance  of  these  discoveries ;  and  it 
was  on  this  occasion  that  he  proposed  to  associate  the  name  of  Mr. 
Miller  with  them,  by  the  wonderful  fossil,  the  PlerichtJii/s  Milleri, 
specimens  of  which  were  then  under  the  notice  of  the  section.  Dr. 
Buckland,  following  M.  Agassiz,  said  that  "  he  had  never  be^n  so 
3 


26  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

much  astonished  in  his  life  by  the  powers  of  any  man  as  he  had  been 
by  the  geological  descriptions  of  Mr.  Miller.  He  described  these 
objects  with  a  felicity  which  made  him  ashamed  of  the  comparative 
meagreness  and  poverty  of  his  own  descriptions  in  the  '  Bridgewater 
Treatise,'  which  had  cost  him  hours  and  days  of  labor.  He  (Dr. 
Buckland)  would  give  Jili  left  hand  to  possess  such  powers  of  descrip- 
tion as  this  man ;  and  if  it  pleased  Providence  to  spare  his  useful 
life,  he,  if  any  one,  would  certainly  render  the  science  attractive  and 
popular,  and  do  equal  service  to  theology  and  geology."  At  the 
meetings  of  the  Association,  the  language  of  panegyric  and  of  mutual 
compliment  is  not  unfrecjuent,  and  does  not  signify  much ;  but  these 
were  spontaneous  tributes  of  praise  to  one  comparatively  unknown. 
The  publication  of  the  volume  on  the  "  Old  Red  Sandstone,"  with 
the  details  of  the  author's  discoveries  and  researches,  more  than  jus- 
tified all  the  anticipations  that  had  been  formed.  It  was  received 
with  highest  approbation,  not  by  men  of  science  alone,  for  the 
interest  of  its  facts,  but  by  men  of  letters,  for  the  beauty  of  its  style. 
Sir  Roderick  Murchison,  in  his  address  to  the  Geological  Society 
that  year,  "  hailed  the  accession  to  their  science  of  such  a  writer," 
and  said  that  "  his  work  is,  to  a  beginner,  worth  a  thousand  didactic 
treatises."  The  Edinburgh  Review  spoke  of  the  book  being  "  as 
admirable  for  the  clearness  of  its  descriptions,  and  the  sweet- 
ness of  its  composition,  as  for  the  purity  and  gracefulness  that  per- 
vade it."  The  impression  made  by  such  a  testimony  was  the  more 
marked,  that  the  reviewer  spoke  of  the  Avriter  as  a  fellow  country- 
man, "  meritorious  and  self-taufrht." 

In  1847  appeared  "  First  Impressions  of  England  and  its  People," 
the  result  of  a  tour  made  during  the  previous  year.  Some  parts  of 
this  book,  especially  the  account  of  the  pilgrimages  to  Stratford-on- 
Avon,  and  the  Leasowes,  and  Olney,  and  other  places  memorable  for 
their  literary  associations,  are  as  fine  pieces  of  descriptive  writing  as 
the  English  language  possesses.  This  magic  of  style  characterized 
all  his  works,  whether  those  of  a  more  popular  kind,  or  his  scientific 
treatises,  such  as  the  "  Old  Red  Sandstone,"  and  "  Footprints  of  the 
Creator,"  a  volume  suggested  by  the  "  Yestiges  of  Creation,"  and 
subversive  of  the  fallacies  of  that  superficial  and  plausible  book. 
Not  one  of  the  authors  of  our  day  has  approached  Hugh  Miller  as  a 
master  of  English  composition,  for  the  equal  of  which  we  must  go 
back  to  the  times  of  Addison,  Ilume,  and  Goldsmith.  Other  living 
writers  have  now  a  wider  cele6rity,  but  they  owe  it  much  to  the 
peculiarities  o£  their  style  or  the  popularity  of  their  topics.     Mr. 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH     MILLER.  27 

Miller  has  taken  subjects  of  science,  too  often  rendered  dry  and 
repulsive,  and  has  thrown  over  them  an  air  of  attractive  romance. 
His  -writings  on  literature,  history,  and  politics,  are  known  to  com- 
paratively few,  from  havinjT  appeared  in  the  columns  of  a  local  news- 
paper. A  judicious  selection  from  his  miscellaneous  articles  in  the 
Witness  would  widely  extend  his  fame,  and  secure  for  him  a  place,  in 
classic  English  literature,  as  high  as  he  held  during  his  life  as  a  peri- 
odical writer  and  as  a  scientific  geologist. 

The  personal  appearance  of  Mr.  Miller,  or  "  Old  Red,"  as  he  was 
familiarly  named  by  his  scientific  friends,  will  not  be  forgotten  by 
any  who  have  seen  him.  A  head  of  great  massiveness,  magnified  by 
an  abundant  profusion  of  sub-Celtic  hair,  was  set  on  a  body  of  mus- 
cular compactness,  but  which  in  later  years  felt  the  undermining 
influence  of  a  life  of  unusual  physical  and  mental  toil.  Generally 
wrapped  in  a  bulky  plaid,  and  with  a  garb  really  for  any  work,  he 
had  the  appearance  of  a  shepherd  from  the  Rosshire  hills  rather  than 
an  author  and  a  man  of  science.  In  conversation  or  in  lecturing, 
the  man  of  original  genius  and  cultivated  mind  at  once  shone  out, 
and  his  abundant  information  and  philosophical  acuteness  were  only 
less  remarkable  than  his  amiable  disposition,  his  generous  spirit,  and 
his  consistent,  humble  piety.  Literature  and  science  have  lost  in 
him  one  of  their  brightest  ornaments,  and  Scotland  one  of  its  great- 
est men. 


On  the  Sabbath  following  Mr.  Miller's  death,  sermons  refer- 
ring to  the  event  Avere  pi'eached  in  many  of  the  churches  in 
Edinburgh.  Some  of  these  were  reported  in  the  newspapers, 
among  Avhich  may  be  mentioned  those  by  the  Rev.  Drs.  H?inna, 
Guthrie,  Hetherington,  Begg,  and  Tweedie. 

On  Monday,  December  the  29th,  the  Funeral  Obsequies 
were  performed.  The  following  account  of  the  imposing  cere^ 
monial  is  from  the  Edinburgh  Witness. 

FUNERAL,    OF   MR.  HUGH    MILLER, 

The  mortal  remains  of  this  truly  great  man  were  consigned  to  the 
grave  on  Monday,  amid  the  most  marked  demonstrations  of  sorrow 
on  the  part  of  the  entire  community. 

The  private  company,  numbering  about  sixty  individuals,  met  at 
Shrub  Mount,  the  residence  of  the  deceased  at  Portobello,  about  a 
quarter  to  one  in  the  afternoon.     Amongst  those  present  were  the 


28  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

Lord  Provost  of  Edinburgh ;  A.  M.  Dunlop,  Esq.,  M.  P. ;  A.  Black, 
Esq.,  M.  P. ;  Professors  Simpson,  Balfour,  and  Eraser ;  Rev.  Princi- 
pal Cunningham;  Professor  James  Buchanan;  Rev.  Drs.  Guthrie, 
Candlish,  Hanna,  Bruce,  Begg,  Hetherington,  and  Wylie ;  Rev. 
Messrs.  M'Kenzie  of  Dunfermline,  Cameron  and  Hunter  of  Nanf- 
poor ;  Maurice  Lothian,  Esq. ;  Geo.  Dalziell,  Esq.,  W.  S. ;  W.  Wood, 
Esq. ;  R.  Paul,  Esq. ;  Francis  Russell,  Esq.,  advocate ;  Itl.  Torrance, 
Esq. ;  Dr.  Russell ;  Dr.  Geo.  Bell ;  J.  F.  Macfarlan,  Esq. ;  Archibald 
Gibson,  Esq. ;  and  Councillor  Johnston.  The  devotional  exercises 
were  conducted  by  Dr.  Guthrie,  who  was  deeply  affected  during  the 
prayer,  and  whose  feelings  at  times  threatened  to  overcome  him. 

Thirteen  two-horse  mourning  coaches  were  here  in  waiting  to 
convey  the  compan}'  to  the  place  of  sepulture  in  the  Grange  Ceme- 
tery, preceded  by  the  hearse,  which  had  four  horses. 

The  melancholy  event,  as  might  have  been  expected,  cast  a  gloom 
over  the  Avhole  of  Portobello;  and  the  Provost  and  Ma"istrates, 
anticipating  the  general  feeling  of  the  inhabitants,  to  whom  Mr.  Mil- 
ler had  endeared  himself  by  liis  genius  and  the  modesty  of  his 
demeanor,  and  also  by  the  readiness  which  he  ever  displayed  to 
contribute  to  their  intellectual  elevation,  by  taking  part  in  several 
courses  of  popular  lectures  in  the  town,  recommended  the  closing  of 
the  different  shops,  —  a  request  which  was  at  once  readily  complied 
with.  Another  striking  proof  of  the  general  desire  to  pay  the  last 
tribute  of  respect  to  the  remains  of  the  deceased,  was  furnished  by 
the  circumstance  that  upwards  of  one  hundred  gentlemen,  many  of 
whom  had,  so  recently  as  the  prc\ious  Tuesda}',  listened  to  the  read- 
ing of  one  of  the  ablest  of  his  lectures,  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Wight,  the 
Congregational  minister,  met  at  half-past  twelve  in  the  Free  Church, 
in  order  to  accompany  the  funeral,  either  on  foot  or  in  carriages,  to 
the  burial  place,  —  a  distance  of  about  four  miles.  After  a  shorty 
impressive  religious  service,  conducted  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Philip  and 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Wight,  they  proceeded  to  join  the  private  company, 
who  had  by  this  time  taken  their  places  in  the  mourning  carriages, 
on  their  way  to  Edinburgh. 

On  reaching  the  General  Post-Office,  in  Waterloo  Place,  the  ranks 
of  the  funeral  procession  were  largely  augmented,  there  being  here 
as  many  as  from  twenty  to  thirty  private  carriages  in  waiting,  filled 
with  the  leading  citizens,  and  a  large  body  of  the  inhabitants,  of  all 
ranks,  classes,  and  denominations,  drawn  up  in  line  three  or  four 
abreast. 

The  Kirk-Session  of  Free  St.  John's,  of  which  Mr.  Miller  was  an 


MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH     MILLER.  29 

office-bearer,  headed  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Guthrie  and  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Hanna,  who  left  the  carriaije  at  the  Post-Office,  occupied  tlie  front 
of  the  procession,  immediately  followed  by  the  Royal  Physical  So- 
cietv,  of  which  the  lamented  deceased  was  a  leading  member,  the 
employes  in  the  Witncsx  office,  and  a  large  body  of  the  general  pub' 
lie.  A  still  more  numerous  body  of  the  citizens,  as  well  as  of  parties 
from  Glasgow,  Liver[)ool,  Stirling,  Bridge  of  Allan,  and  other  parts 
of  the  country,  drew  up  in  the  rear  of  the  long  line  of  carnages, 
while  the  sides  of  the  streets  were  also  lined  with  mourners,  who 
accompanied  the  procession  to  the  Cemetery.  Besides  the  large  con- 
course of  people  who  hei-e  joined  the  procession,  the  whole  front  of 
the  Register  Office  and  the  corners  of  the  North  Bridge  were  densely 
o(;cupied  by  some  thousands  of  spectators ;  and  it  may  be  safely  said, 
that  no  event  since  the  death  of  Dr.  Chalmers  has  caused  such  deep- 
felt  sorrow  and  regret  in  Edinburgh.  The  numbers  present  in  the 
funeral  cortecje  must  have  amounted  to  from  one  to  two  thousand ; 
indeed,  one  paper  states  that  "  at  one  time  there  could  not  have 
been  many  less  than  four  thousand  people  in  the  procession  ;  "  whilst 
another  journal  says,  that  although  the  inclemency  of  the  weather, 
the  day  being  one  of  the  dreai-iest  of  the  season,  "  kept  back  many  who 
would  otherwise  have  swelled  the  line  of  mourners,  even  with  this 
drawback,  it  has  been  informed  that  the  attendance  was  even  greater 
than  on  the  occasion  of  the  funeral  of  Dr.  Chalmers  in  1847." 

After  a  short  delay,  caused  by  these  accessions  to  the  procession, 
the  whole  moved  up  the  North  Bridge.  It  was  gratifying  to  observe 
that  nearly  all  the  shops  on  the  North  and  South  Bridges,  and  in 
Nicolson  and  Clerk  streets,  along  which  the  cortege  passed,  were 
closed ;  and  along  the  whole  route  many  a  saddened  countenance 
and  tearful  eye  could  be  seen,  all  testifying  to  the  deep  respect  enter- 
tained for  him  whose  manly  form  had  so  often  traversed  these  same 
streets. 

On  reaching  the  entrance  of  the  Grange  Cemetery,  the  coffin  was 
removed  from  the  hearse,  and  borne  shoulder  high  to  the  tomb,  fol- 
lowed by  the  pall-bearers  and  the  general  company.  The  ground 
selected  for  the  burial-place  is  the  vrestmost  space  but  one  on  thft 
northern  side  of  the  Cemetery,  and  in  a  line  with  the  graves  of  Dr. 
Chalmers,  Sir  Andrew  Agnew,  and  Sheriff  Speirs,  with  which  it  is 
in  close  proximity.  As  many  of  our  readers  are  aware,  the  situation 
is  one  of  surpassing  scenic  beauty,  and  was  described  by  the  deceased's 
own  matchless  pen  but  a  few  years  ago,  on  the  occasion  of  the  burial 
3* 


30  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH     MILLER. 

of  Chalmers ;  and  certainly  in  the  grave  of  Hugh  JSIiller  a  new 
feature  of  attraction  has  been  added  to  the  spot. 

The  pall-bearers  were  Mr.  Miller's  oldest  son,  —  a  boy  about  four- 
teen years  of  age,  —  who  was  accompanied  by  his  younger  brother, 
six  or  seven  years  old ;  Mr.  A.  AVilliamson,  his  half-brother  and 
nearest  kinsman;  Mr.  Fairly,  his  partner  in  business;  Rev.  Dr. 
Guthrie,  Rev.  Dr.  Hanna,  Mr.  Dunlop,  M.  P.,  Mr.  R.  Paul,  and 
Principal  Cunningham. 

The  mournful  ceremony  was  now  near  its  close.  As  the  heavy, 
dull  sound,  caused  by  the  fall  of  the  damp  earth  upon  the  coffin,  fell  • 
upon  the  ear,  a  sad  and  painful  sensation  crept  over  the  frame, 
increased  as  this  was  by  the  wintry  aspect  of  the  day  and  the  heavy 
leaden  sky,  which,  like  a  pall,  was  spread  over  the  face  of  nature,  in 
striking  harmony  with  the  solemnity  of  the  scene.  A  few  minutes 
more,  and  all  was  over ;  and  the  vast  company,  uncovered,  paid  the 
closing  mark  of  respect  to  the  ashes  of  the  mighty  dead.  A  touch-. 
in£  scene  occurred  at  the  close  of  all.  After  the  whole  of  the  com- 
pany  had  retired,  a  laboring  man,  clad  in  humble  habiliments,  seized 
hold  of  a  handful  of  ivy  or  laurel  leaves,  and  gently  strewed  them 
upon  the  grave,  while  the  tearful  eye  eloquently  spoke  of  the  strength 
of  his  feelings. 

So  passed  away  one  of  whom  Dr.  Chalmers  made  the  remark 
that  "  since  Scott's  death  he  was  the  greatest  Scotchman  that 
was  left."  "  The  space  his  name  occupied  in  the  literary  and 
scientific  world,"  says  another,  "  could  hardly  have  been  con- 
jectured, but  for  the  blank  he  leaves  behind  him  now  that  he 
has  left  it.  Other  men  may  have  extended  the  domain  of 
science  wider ;  but  no  man  has  done  more  to  extend  the  circle 
of  its  votaries  by  the  magic  of  his  style  and  the  life-like  power 
of  his  descriptions ;  nor  has  any  man  done  more  to  keep  to- 
gether the  claims,  too  often  made  to  appear  divergent,  of  Science 
and  Religion,  and  to  blend  them  into  one  intelligent  and  reason- 
able servic^j.  It  was  worth  while  to  have  lived  to  effect  this, 
even  at  the  cost  of  the  clouds  which  saddened  and  darkened 
the  close.     Bit 

'  glory  without  end 


Scatters  the  clouds  away;  and  on  that  name  attend 
The  thanks  and  praises  of  all  time.'  " 


M  K  M  O  K I A  L  S    O  1     HUGH     31 1  L  L  E  K  .  31 


A    PRAYER 

BY     JOHN     KNOX, 

MADE  AT  THE  FIRST  ASSEMBLIE  OF  THE  CONGREGATION,  WHEN 
THE  CONFESSION  OF  OUR  FAITHE  AND  WHOLE  ORDERS  OF 
THE    CHURCH    WAS    THERE    RED    AND    APPROVED.* 

O  Lord  God  Almightle,  and  Father  moste  mercifull,  there  is  none 
lyke  thee  in  heaven  nor  in  earthe,  which  workest  all  thinges  for  the 
glorie  of  thy  name  and  the  comfort  of  thyne  elect.  Thou  dydst  once 
make  man  ruler  over  all  thy  creatures,  and  placed  hym  in  the  gar- 
den of  all  pleasures ;  but  how  soone,  alas,  dyd  he  in  his  felicitie 
forget  thy  goodness  ?  Thy  people  Israel  also,  in  their  wealth  dyd 
evermore  runne  astray,  abusinge  thy  manifold  mercies ;  lyke  as  all 
fleshe  contynually  rageth  when  it  hath  gotten  libertie  and  external 
prosperitie.  But  such  is  thy  wisdome  adjoyned  to  thy  mercies,  deare 
Father,  that  thou  sekest  all  means  possible  to  brynge  thy  chyldren 
to  the  sure  sense  and  lyvely  feelinge  of  thy  fatherly  favour.  And 
therefore  when  prosperitie  wyll  not  serve,  then  sendest  thow  adver- 
sitie,  graciously  correctinge  all  thy  chyldren  whome  thou  receyvest 
into  thy  howshold.  Wherfore  we,  wretched  and  miserable  synners, 
render  unto  thee  most  humble  and  hartie  thankes,  that  yt  hath 
pleased  thee  to  call  us  home  to  thy  folde  by  thy  Fatherly  correction 
at  this  present,  wheras  in  our  prosperitie  and  libertie  we  dyd  neglect 
thy  graces  offered  unto  us.  For  the  which  negligence,  and  many 
other  grevous  synnes  whereof  we  now  accuse  our  selves  before  thee, 
thow  mightest  moste  justly  have  gyven  us  up  to  reprobate  mynds  and 
induration  of  our  hartes,  as  thow  haste  done  others.  But  such  is  thy 
goodnes,  O  Lord,  that  thou  semest  to  forget  all  our  offences,  and  haste 
called  us  of  thy  good  pleasure  from  all  idolatries  into  this  Citie  most 
Christianlye  refourmed,  to  professe  thy  name,  and  to  suffer  some 
crosse  amongest  thy  people  for  thy  truth  and  Gospell's  sake ;  and  so 
to  be  thy  Avytnesses  with  thy  Prophets  and  Apostles,  yea,  with  thy 
dearely  beloved  Sonne  Jesus  Christ  our  head,  to  whome  thow  dost 
be^ynne  here  to  fashion  us  lyke,  that  in  his  glorie  we  may  also  be 
lyke  hym  when  he  shall  appear.     O  Lord  God,  what  are  we  upon 

•  See  ante,  p.  9. 


32  MEMORIALS    OF    HUGH    MILLER. 

whome  thowe  shuldest  shewe  this  great  mercye  ?  O  moste  lovynge 
Lord,  forgyve  us  our  unthankfulnes,  and  all  our  synnes,  for  Jesus 
Christ's  sake.  O  heavenly  Father,  increase  thy  Holy  Spirit  in  us,  to 
teache  our  heartes  to  cry  Abba,  deare  Father !  to  assure  us  of  our 
eternal  election  in  Christ;  to  revele  thy  Avyll  more  and  more  towards 
us ;  to  confirme  us  so  in  thy  trewthe,  that  Ave  may  lyve  and  dye 
therein ;  and  that  by  the  power  of  the  same  Spirit  we  may  boldlely 
gyve  an  accompts  of  our  faith  to  all  men  with  humblenes  and  meke- 
nes,  that  whereas  they  backbyte  and  slaunder  us  as  evyll  doers,  they 
may  be  ashamed  and  once  stopp  their  mowthes,  seinge  our  good 
conversation  in  Christ  lesu,  for  whose  sake  we  beseche  thee,  O  Lord 
God,  to  guide,  governe,  and  prosper  this  our  enterprise  in  assemblinge 
our  bretherne,  to  prayse  thy  holie  name.  And  not  only  to  be  here 
present  with  us  thy  children  according  to  thy  promesse,  but  also 
mercifullie  to  assist  thy  like  persecuted  people,  our  Bretherne,  gath- 
ered in  all  other  places,  that  they  and  we,  consentinge  together  in 
one  spirite  and  truethe,  may  (all  worldly  respectes  set  a  part)  seke 
thy  onely  honor  and  glorie  in  all  our  and  their  Assemblies. 

SO  BE  IT. 


THE 


TESTIMONY  OF  THE  EOCKS. 


LECTURE    FIRST. 

THE  PAL^ONTOLOGICAL  HISTORY   OF  PLANTS. 

Paleontology,  or  the  science  of  ancient  organisms, 
deals,  as  its  subject,  with  all  the  plants  and  animals  of  all 
the  geologic  periods.  It  bears  nearly  the  same  sort  of 
relation  to  the  physical  history  of  the  past,  that  biogra})hy 
does  to  the  civil  and  political  history  of  the  past.  For  just 
as  a  complete  biographic  system  would  include  every  name 
known  to  the  historian,  a  complete  palaontologic  system 
would  include  every  fossil  known  to  the  geologist.  It 
enumerates  and  describes  all  the  organic  existences  of  all 
the  extinct  creations, — all  the  existences,  too,  of  the  pres- 
ent creation  that  occur  in  the  fossil  or  semivfossil  form ; 
and,  thus  coextensive  in  space  with  the  earth's  surface, — • 
nay,  greatly  more  than  coextensive  with  the  earth's  sur- 
face,—  for  in  the  vast  hieroglyphic  record  which  our  globe 
composes,  page  lies  beneath  page,  and  inscription  covers 
over  inscription,  —  coextensive,  too,  in  time,  with  every 
period  in  the  terrestrial  history  since  being  first  began 
upon  our  planet,  —  it  presents  to  the  student  a  theme  so 
vast  and  multifarious,  that  it  might  seem  but  the  result,  on 
his  part,  of  a  proper   modesty,   conscious  of  the  limited 


34  THE    PALJiONTOLOGICAL 

range  of  his  powers,  and  of  the  brief  and  lleetmg  terra  ot 
his  life,  were  he  to  despair  of  being  ever  able  effectually  to 
grapple  with  it.  "  But,"  to  borrow  from  one  of  the  most 
mgenious  of  our  Scottish  metaphysicians,  "in  this,  as  in 
other  instances  in  which  nature  has  given  us  difficulties 
with  which  to  cope,  she  has  not  left  us  to  be  AvhoUy  over- 
come." "  If,"  says  Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  in  his  remarks  on 
the  classifying  principle,  — "  if  she  has  placed  us  in  a 
labyrinth,  she  has  at  the  same  time  furnished  us  with  a 
clue  which  may  guide  us,  not,  indeed,  through  all  its  dark 
and  intricate  whidings,  but  through  those  broad  paths 
which  conduct  us  into  day.  The  single  power  by  which 
we  discover  resemblance  or  relation  in  general,  is  a  sufficient 
aid  to  us  in  the  perplexity  or  confusion  of  our  first  attempts 
at  arrangement.  It  begins  by  converting  thousands,  and 
more  than  thousands,  into  one ;  and,  reducing  in  the  same 
manner  the  numbers  thus  formed,  it  arrives  at  last  at  the 
few  distinctive  characters  of  those  great  comprehensive 
tribes  on  which  it  ceases  to  operate,  because  there  is  nothing 
left  to  oppress  the  memory  or  the  understandhig." 

But,  is  this  all  ?  Can  the  Palaeontologist  but  say  that  that 
classifyhig  principle,  which  in  every  other  department  of 
science  yields  such  assistance  to  the  momoiy,  is  also  of  use  in 
his,  or  but  urge  that  it  enables  him  to  sort  and  ai-range  his 
fiicts ;  and  that,  by  converting  one  idea  into  the  type  and 
exemplar  of  many  resembling  ones,  it  imparts  to  him  an 
ability  of  carrying  not  inadequate  conceptions  of  the  mighty 
whole  in  his  mind  ?  If  this  were  all,  you  might  well  ask. 
Why  obtrude  upon  us,  in  connection  with  your  special 
science,  a  common  semi-metaphysical  idea,  equally  applica- 
ble to  all  the  sciences,  —  in  especial,  for  example,  to  that 
botany  which  is  the  science  of  existing  plants,  and  to  that 
zoology  which  is  the  science  of  existing  animals  ?  Nay,  I 
reply,  but  it  is  not  all.     I  refer  to  this  classifying  principle 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  So 


o.> 


because,  while  it  exists  in  relation  to  all  other  sciences  as  a 
principle  —  to  use  the  words  of  the  metaphysician  just 
quoted  —  "  given  to  us  by  nature,"  —  as  a  principle  of  the 
mind  within^  —  it  exists  in  Palaiontological  science  as  a 
principle  of  nature  itself,  —  as  a  principle  palpably  external 
to  the  mind.  It  is  a  marvellous  fact,  whose  fuU  meaning 
we  can  as  yet  but  imperfectly  comprehend,  that  myriads  of 
ages  ere  there  existed  a  luunan  mind,  well  nigh  the  same 
principles  of  classification  now  developed  by  man's  intellect 
in  our  better  treatises  of  zoology  and  botany,  were  devel- 
oped on  this  earth  by  the  successiA'e  geologic  periods ;  and 
that  the  by-past  productions  of  our  planet,  animal  and  veg- 
etable, were  chronologically  arranged  in  its  history,  accord- 
ing to  the  same  laws  of  thought  which  impart  regularity 
and  order  to  the  works  of  the  later  naturalist  and  phytolo- 
gists. 

I  need  scarce  say  how  slow  and  interrupted  in  both  prov- 
inces the  course  of  arrangement  has  been,  or  how  often 
succeeding  writers  have  had  to  undo  what  their  predeces- 
sors had  done,  only  to  have  their  own  classifications  set 
aside  by  their  successors  in  turn.  At  length,  however, 
when  the  work  appears  to  be  well  nigh  completed,  a  new 
science  has  arisen,  which  presents  us  AS'ith  a  very  wonderful 
means  of  testing  it.  Cowley,  in  his  too  eulogistic  ode  to 
Plobbes, —  smit  by  the  singular  ingenuity  of  the  philosophic 
infidel,  and  unable  to  look  through  his  sophisms  to  the  con- 
sequences which  they  involved, —  could  say,  in  addressing 
him,  that 

"  only  God  could  know 
Whether  the  fair  idea  he  did  show 
Agreed  entirely  with  God's  own  or  no." 

And  he  then  not  very  wisely  added, — 

"  This,  I  dare  boldly  tell, 
'T  is  so  like  truth,  't  will  serve  our  turn  as  woll." 


36  THE    PAL.EONTOLOGICAL 

We  now  know,  however,  that  no  mere  resemblance  to 
truth  will  for  any  considerable  length  of  time  serve  its  turn. 
It  is  because  the  resemblances  have,  like  those  of  Hobbes, 
been  mere  resemblances,  that  so  much  time  and  labor  have 
had  to  be  wasted  by  the  pioneers  of  science  in  their  re- 
moval ;  and,  now  that  a  wonderful  opportunity  has  occurred 
of  comparing,  in  this  matter  of  classification,  the  human 
with  the  Divine  idea, — the  idea  embodied  by  the  zoologists 
and  botanists  in  their  respective  systems,  with  the  idea 
embodied  by  the  Creator  of  all  in  geologic  history, — we 
cannot  perhaps  do  better,  in  entering  upon  our  subject, 
than  to  glance  briefly  at  the  great  features  in  which  God's 
order  of  classification,  as  developed  in  Palaeontology,  agrees 
with  the  order  in  which  man  has  at  length  learned  to  range 
the  living  productions,  plant  and  animal,  by  which  he  is 
surrounded,  and  of  which  he  himself  forms  the  most  re- 
markable portion.  In  an  age  in  which  a  class  of  writers 
not  without  their  influence  in  the  world  of  letters  would 
fain  repudiate  every  argument  derived  from  design^  and 
denounce  all  who  hold  with  Paley  and  Chalmers  as  anthro- 
pomorphists,  that  labor  to  create  for  themselves  a  god  of 
then*  own  type  and  form,  it  may  be  not  altogether  unprofit- 
able to  contemplate  the  wonderful  parallelism  which  exists 
between  the  Divine  and  human  systems  of  classification,  and 
—  remembering  that  the  geologists  who  have  discovered 
the  one  had  no  hand  in  assisting  the  naturalists  and  phytol- 
ogists  who  framed  the  other  —  soberly  to  inquire  whether 
we  have  not  a  new  argument  in  the  fact  for  an  identity  in 
constitution  and  quality  of  the  Divine  and  human  mmds,  — 
not  a  mere  fanciful  identity,  the  result  of  a  disposition  on  the 
part  of  man  to  imagine  to  himself  a  God  bearing  his  own 
likeness,  but  an  identity  real  and  actual,  and  the  result  of 
that  creative  act  by  which  God  formed  man  in  his  OAvn  image. 
The  study  of  plants  and  animals  seems  to  have  been  a 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  37 

favorite  one  with  thouglitful  men  in  every  age  of  the  world. 
According  to  the  Psalmist,  these  great  "  works  of  the 
LorU  are  sought  out  of  all  them  that  have  pleasure  therein." 
The  Book  of  Job,  probably  the  oldest  writing  in  existence, 
IS  full  of  vivid  descriptions  of  the  wild  denizens  of  the  flood 
and  desert ;  and  it  is  expressly  recorded  of  the  wise  old 
king,  that  he  "  spake  of  trees,  from  the  cedar  tree  that  is  in 
Lebanon,  even  unto  the  h3'Ssop  that  springeth  out  of  the 
wall ;  and  also  of  beasts,  and  of  fowl,  and  of  creeping  things, 
and  of  fishes."  Solomon  was  a  zoologist  and  botanist ; 
and  there  is  palpable  classification  in  the  manner  in  which 
his  studies  are  described.  It  is  a  law  of  the  human  mind, 
as  has  been  alread}^  said,  that,  wherever  a  large  stock  of 
facts  are  acquired,  the  classifj'ing  principle  steps  in  to 
arrange  them.  "  Even  the  rudest  wanderer  in  the  fields," 
Bays  Dr.  Brown,  "  finds  that  the  profusion  of  blossoms 
around  him — in  the  gi-eater  number  of  which  he  is  able 
himself  to  discover  many  striking  resemblances  —  may  be 
reduced  to  some  order  of  arrangement."  But,  for  many 
centuries 5  this  arranging  faculty  labored  but  to  little  pur- 
pose. As  specimens  of  the  strange  classification  that  con- 
tinued to  obtain  down  till  comparatively  modern  times, 
let  us  select  that  of  two  works  which,  from  the  literary 
celebrity  of  their  authors,  still  possess  a  classical  standing 
in  letters,  —  Cowley's  "  Treatise  on  Plants,"  and  Gold- 
smith's "  History  of  the  Earth  and  Animated  Nature." 
Tiie  plants  we  find  arranged  b}^  the  poet  on  the  simple  but 
very  inadequate  principle  of  size  and  show.  Herbs  are 
placed  first,  as  lowest  and  least  conspicuous  in  the  scale  ; 
then  flowers  ;  and,finall3',  trees.  Among  the  herbs,  at  least 
two  of  the  ferns — the  true  maidenhair  and  the  spleenwort 
—  are  assigned  places  among  plants  of  such  high  standing 
as  sage,  mint,  and  rosemary :  among  the  flowers,  monoco- 
tyledons, such  as  the  iris,  the  tulip,  and  the  lily,  appear 


38  THE    PAL^ONTOLOQICAL 

among  dicotyledons,  such  as  the  rose,  the  violet,  the  sun- 
flower, and  the  auricula ;  and  among  trees  we  find  the 
palms  placed  between  the  plum  and  the  olive  ;  and  the  yew, 
the  fir,  and  the  juniper,  flanked  on  one  side  by  the  box  and 
the  holly,  and  on  the  other  by  the  oak.  Such,  in  treating 
of  plants,  was  the  classification  adopted  by  one  of  the  most 
learned  of  English  poets  in  the  year  1657. 

Nor  was  Goldsmith,  who  wrote  more  than  a  century 
later,  much  more  fortunate  in  dealing  with  the  animal 
kingdom.  Buffon  had  ah'eady  published  his  great  work ; 
and  even  he  could  bethink  him  of  no  better  mode  of  divid- 
ing his  animals  than  into  wild  and  tame.  And  in  Gold- 
smith, who  adopted,  in  treating  of  the  mammals,  a  similar 
principle,  we  find  the  fishes  and  molluscs  placed  in  advance 
of  the  sauroid,  ophidian,  and  batrachian  reptiles,  —  the 
whale  united  in  close  relationship  to  the  sharks  and  rays, — 
animals  of  the  tortoise  kind  classed  among  animals  of  the 
lobster  kind,  and  both  among  shell  fish,  such  as  the  snail, 
the  nautilus,  and  the  03'ster.  And  jei  Goldsmith  was 
engaged  on  his  work  little  more  than  eighty  years  ago.  In 
fine,  the  true  principles  of  classification  in  the  animal  king- 
dom are  of  well  nigh  as  recent  development  as  geologic 
science  itself,  and  not  gi-eatly  more  ancient  in  even  the 
vegetable  kingdom.  It  would,  of  course,  be  wholly  out  of 
place  to  attempt  giving  a  minute  history  here  of  the  prog- 
ress of  arrangement  in  either  department ;  but  it  can 
scarce  be  held  that  the  natural  system  of  plants  was  other 
than  very  incomplete  previous  to  1789,  when  Jussieu  first 
enunciated  his  scheme  of  classification ;  nor  did  it  receive 
its  later  improvements  until  so  late  as  1846,  when,  after  the 
publication,  in  succession,  of  the  schemes  of  De  Candolle  and 
Endlicher,  Lindle}^  communicated  his  finished  system  to  the 
world.  And  there  certainly  existed  no  even  tolerably  per- 
fect system  of  zoology  imtil  1816,  when  the  "Animal  King 


HISTORY     OF     PLANTS,  y9 

dom"  of  Cuvier  appeared.  Later  naturalists,  —  such  as 
Agassiz,  in  his  own  special  department,  the  history  of  fishes, 
and  Professor  Owen  in  the  invertebrate  divisions,  —  have 
improved  on  the  classification  of  even  the  gi-eat  Frenchman  ; 
but  for  purposes  of  comparison  between  the  schorae 
developed  in  geologic  historj^  and  that  at  length  elaborated 
by  the  human  mind,  the  S3'3tem  of  Cuvier  will  be  found,  for 
at  least  our  present  purpose,  suflBciently  complete.  And  in 
tracing  thi'ough  time  the  course  of  the  vegetable  kingdom, 
let  us  adopt,  as  our  standard  to  measure  it  by,  tne  s^-stem 
of  Lindley. 

Commencing  at  the  bottom  of  the  scale,  we  find  the 
Thallogens,  or  flowerless  plants  which  lack  proper  stems 
and  leaves,  —  a  class  which  includes  all  the  algse.  Next 
succeed  the  Acrogens,  or  flowerless  plants  that  possess  both 
stems  and  leaves,  —  such  as  the  ferns  and  their  allies.  Next, 
omitting  an  inconspicuous  class,  represented  by  but  a  few 
parasitical  plants  incapable  of  preservation  as  fossils,  come 
the  Endogens,  —  monocotyledonous  flowering  plants,  that 
include  the  palms,  the  liliacea},  and  several  other  families,  all 
characterized  by  the  parallel  venation  of  their  leaves. 
Next,  omitting  another  inconspicuous  tribe,  there  follows  a 
very  important  class,  —  the  Gymnogens,  —  polycotyledo- 
nous  trees,  represented  by  the  coniferfB  and  cycadacege. 
And,  last  of  all,  come  the  Dicotyledonous  Exogens,  — a  class 
to  which  all  our  fruit,  and  what  are  known  as  our  "  forest 
trees,"  belong,  with  a  vastly  preponderating  majority  of  the 
herbs  and  flowers  that  impart  fertility  and  beauty  to  our 
gardens  and  meadows.  This  last  class,  though  but  one,  now 
occupies  much  greater  space  in  the  vegetable  kingdom  than 
all  the  others  united. 

Such  is  the  arrangement  of  Lindlej',  or  rather  an  an'ange- 
ment  the  slow  growth  of  ages,  to  which  this  distinguished 
botanist  has  given  the  last  finishing  touches.     And  let  us 


40 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


now  mark  how  closely  it  resembles  the  geologic  arrange- 
ment as  developed  in  the  successive  stages  of  the  earth's 
history. 

Fig.  1.* 

Thallogeiis. 


Silurian. 

Old  Red. 

Carboniferous. 

Permian. 
Triassic. 

Oolitic. 
Cretaceona. 

Tertiary. 


Acrogcns. 
Gyrnnogens. 

Monocotyledons . 


Dicotyledons. 


Dicotyledonous  Trees. 


.     Geologic  [Thai.  Ac.    Gy.  Men.  Die]  arrangement. 
Lindley's  [Thai.  Ac.    Mon.  Gy.  Die]  arrangement. 
THE  GENEALOGY  OF  PLANTS. 

Tlie  most  ancient  period  of  whose  organisms  any  trace 
remains  in  the  rocks  seems  to  have  been,  prevailingly  at 

*  The  liorizontal  lines  in  this  diagram  indicate  the  divisions  of  the 
various  geologic  systems  ;  the  vertical  lines  tlie  sweep  of  the  various 
classes  or  sub-classes  of  plants  across  the  geologic  scale,  with,  so  far 
as  has  yet  been  ascertained,  the  place  of  their  first  appearance  in  cre- 
ation ;  while  the  double  line  of  type  below  shows  in  what  degree  the 
order  of  their  occurrence  agrees  with  the  arrangement  of  the  botanist. 
The  single  point  of  difference  indicated  by  the  diagram  between  the 
order  of  occurrence  and  that  of  arrangement,  viz.,  the  transposition 
of  the  gymnogcnous  and  monocotyledonous  classes,  must  be  regarded 
as  purely  provisional.  It  is  definitely  ascertained  that  the  Lower  Old 
lied  Sandstone  has  its  coniferous  wood,  but  not  yet  definitely  ascer- 
tained that  it  has  its  true  monocotyledonous  plants ;  thougii  indica- 
tions are  not  awanting  that  the  latter  were  introduced  upon  the  scene 
at  least  as  early  as  the  pines  or  araucarians ;  and  the  chance  discovery 


1 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  41 

least,  a  period  of  Thallogens.  We  must,  of  course,  take 
into  account  the  fact,  that  it  has  yielded  no  land  plants,  and 
that  the  sea  is  everywhere  now,  as  of  old,  the  great  habitat 
of  the  algae,  —  one  of  the  four  great  orders  into  which  the 
Thallogens  are  divided.  There  appear  no  traces  of  a  ter- 
restrial vegetation  until  we  reach  the  uppermost  beds  of 
the  Upper  Silurian  System.  But,  account  for  the  fact  as 
we  may,  it  is  at  least  worthy  of  notice,  that,  alike  in  the 
systems  of  our  botanists  and  in  the  chronological  arrange- 
ments of  our  geologists,  the  first  or  introductory  class 
which  occurs  in  the  ascending  order  is  this  humble  Thallo- 
genic  class.  There  is  some  trace  in  the  Lower  Silurians  of 
Scotland  of  a  vegetable  structure  which  may  have  belonged 
to  one  of  the  humbler  Endogens,  of  which,  at  least,  a  single 
genu?,  the  Zosteracece^  still  exists  in  salt  water ;  but  the 
trace  is  faint  and  doubtful,  and,  ev^en  were  it  established,  it 
would  form  merely  a  solitary  exception  to  the  general 
evidence  that  the  first  kno\m  period  of  vegetable  existence 
was  a  period  of  Thallogens.  The  terrestrial  remains  of  the 
Upper  Silurians  of  England,  the  oldest  yet  known,  consist 
chiefly  of  spore-like  bodies,  which  belonged,  says  Dr. 
Hooker,  to  L3Copodiacec'e,  —  an  order  of  the  second  or 
acrogenic  class.  And,  in  the  second  great  geologic  period, 
—  that  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  —  we  find  this  second 
class  not  inadequately  represented.  In  its  lowest  fossil- 
iferous  beds  we  detect  a  Lycopodite  which  not  a  little 
resembles  one  of  the  commonest  of  our  club  mosses,  —  Ly- 
copodium  davalam^  —  with  a  minute  fern  and  a  large  stri- 
ated plant  resembling  a  calamite,  and  evidently  allied  to  an 
existing  genus  of  Acrogens,  the  equisetaceae.  In  the  JMiddle 
Old  Red  Sandstone  there  also  occurs  a  small  fern,  with 

of  some  fossil  in  a  sufficiently  good  state  of  keeping  to  determine  the 
point  may,  of  course,  at  once  reti-anspose  the  transposition,  and  bring 
into  complete  correspondence  the  geologic  and  botanic  arrangements. 


42 


THE    PALiEONTOLOGICAL 


Fig.  2. 


some  trace  of  a  larger;  and  one  of  its  best  preserved 
vegetable  organisms  is  a  lepidodendron,  —  an  extinct  ally 

of  the  Lycopodiums ;  while  in 
the  upper  beds  of  the  system, 
especially  as  developed  in  the 
south  of  Ireland,  the  noble  fern 
known  as  Cydopteris  Hiherrdcus 
is  very  abundant.  This  fern  has 
been  detected  also  in  the  Upper 
Old  Red  of  our  own  country, 
mingled  with  fragments  of  con- 
temporary calamites.  With, 
however,  these  earliest  plants  of 
the  land  yet  known,  there  occurs 
a  true  wood,  which  belonged,  as 
shown  by  its  structure,  to  a 
g}Tnnospennous  or  polycotyle- 
donous  tree,  and  which  we  find 
associated  with  remains  of  Coo- 
costeus  and  Diplacanthus. 

And  here  let  me  remark,  that 
the  facts  of  Palaeontological 
science  compel  us  to  blend,  in 
some  degree,  with  the  classifica- 
tion of  our  modern  botanists, 
that  of  the  botanists  of  an  earlier 
time.  In  a  passage  alreadj'  quoted,  Solomon  is  said  to 
have  discoursed  of  plants,  "  from  the  cedar  tree  that  is 
in  Lebanon,  to  the  hyssop  that  springeth  out  of  the  wall," 
-^  from  the  gi-eat  tree  to  the  minute  herb ;  and  Cowley 
rose,  in  his  metrical  treatise,  as  has  been  shown,  from 
descriptions  of  herbs  and  flowers  to  descriptions  of  fruit 
and  forest  trees.  And  as  in  every  age  in  which  there 
existed  a  terrestrial  vegetation  there  seem    to  have  been 


CYCLOPTERIS  niBEKNICUS. 

(Sat.  Bizc.) 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS. 


4a 


"  trees  "  as  certainly  as  "  herbs,  the  palaeontological  bot- 
anist finds  that  he  has,  in  consequence,  to  range  his  classes. 


Fig.  3. 


CONIFER  OF  THE  LOWER  OI,D  RED  SANDSTONE. 

Cromarty. 
(Mag.  forty  fliamcters. ) 

not  in  one  series,  but  in  two,  —  the  G3'mnogens,  or  cone- 
bearing  trees,  in  a  line  nearly-  parallel  with  the  Acrogens, 
or  flowerlcKSS,  spore-bearing  herbs.  But  the  arrangement  is 
in  no  degree  the  less  striking  from  the  circumstance  that  it 
is  ranged,  not  in  one,  but  in  two  lines.  It  is,  however,  an 
untoward  arrangement  for  the  purposes  of  the  Lamarckian, 
whose  peculiar  h3"pothesis  would  imperatively  demand,  not 
a  double,  but  a  single  column,  in  which  the  ferns  and  club 
mosses  would  stand  far  in  advance,  in  point  of  time,  of  the 
ConiferiE.  In  the  Coal  Measures,  so  remarkable  for  the 
gi'eat  luxuriance  of  their  flora,  both  the  Gymnogens  and 
Acrogens  are  largely  developed,  with  a  ver^^  puzzling  inter- 


44  THE    PAL,-EONTCL.OGrCAL 

mediate  class,  that,  while  they  attained  to  the  size  of  trees, 
liive  the  former,  retained  in  a  remarkable  degree,  as  in  the 
Lepidodendra  and  the  Calamites,  the  peculiar  features  of 
the  latter.  And  with  these  there  appear,  though  more 
sparingly,  the  Endogens,  —  monocotj-ledonous  plants,  rep- 
resented by  a  few  palm-lilie  trees  (Palmacites) ,  a  few  date- 
lilve  fruits  (Trigonocarpum) ,  and  a  few  grass-like  herbs 
(Poacites).  In  the  great  Secondaiy  division,  the  true  dico- 
tj^ledonous  plants  first  appear ;  but,  so  far  as  is  yet  known, 
no  dicotyledonous  wood.  In  the  earlier  formations  of  the 
division  a  degree  of  doubt  attaches  to  even  the  few  leaves 
of  this  class  hitherto  detected ;  but  in  the  Lower  Creta- 
ceous strata  they  become  at  once  unequivocal  in  their  char- 
acter, and  comparatively  abundant,  both  as  individuals  and 
species ;  and  in  the  Tertiary  deposits  they  greatly  out- 
number all  the  humbler  classes,  and  appear  not  only  as 
herbs,  but  also  as  great  trees.  Not,  however,  until  shortly 
before  the  introduction  of  man  do  some  of  their  highest 
orders,  such  as  the  Rosacese,  come  upon  the  scene,  as 
plants  of  that  great  garden  —  including  the  fields  of  the 
agriculturist  —  which  it  has  been  part  of  man's  set  task 
upon  earth  to  keep  and  to  dress.  And  such  seems  to  be 
the  order  of  classification  in  the  vegetable  kingdom,  as 
developed  hi  creation,  and  determined  by  the  geologic 
periods. 

The  parallelism  which  exists  between  the  course  of 
creation,  as  exhibited  in  the  animal  kingdom,  and  the  classi- 
fication of  the  greatest  zoologist  of  modern  times,  is  perhaps 
still  more  remarkable.  Cuvier  divides  all  animals  into 
vertebrate  and  invertebrate ;  the  invertebrates  consisting, 
according  to  his  arrangement,  of  three  great  divisions,  — 
mollusca,  articulata,  and  radiata ;  and  the  vertebrates,  of 
four  gi-eat  classes,  —  the  mammals,  the  birds,  the  reptiles, 
and  the  fishes.     From  the  lowest  zone  at  which  organic 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS. 


45 


remtiins  occur,  up  till  the  higher  beds  of  the  Lower  Silurian 
System,  all  the  animal  remains  yet  found  belong  to  the 
invertebrate  divisions.  The  numerous  tables  of  stone  which 
compose  the  leaves  of  this  first  and  earliest  of  the  geologic 
volumes  correspond  in  their  contents  with  that  concluding 
volume  of  Cuvier's  great  work  in  which  he  deals  with  the 
mollusca,  articulata,  and  radiata  ;  with,  however,  this  differ- 
ence, that  the  three  great  di\'isions,  instead  of  occurring  in 
a  continuous  series,  are  ranged,  like  the  terrestrial  herbs 
and  trees,  in  parallel  columns.  The  chain  of  animal  being 
on  its  first  appearance  is,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  a  three- 
fold chain  •  — a  fact  nicely  correspondent  with  the  further 


Fig.  4.* 


Silurian. 
Old  Red. 

Carboniferous. 

Permian. 
Trlassio. 

Oolitic, 
Cret;iceou8. 

Tertiary. 
Recent. 


-  ■         J 

■ 

■ 

I 

n 

, 

1 

i: 

Rad.  Art.  Mol. 

Fishes. 

Reptiles. 


"Birds. 
Manunals. 


"Pla.  Medi. 


Geologic  [Rnd.    Art.    Mol.    Flsli     Rip.    Bird.  Mam.  Mun.]  Ai-rangemcnt. 
Cuvier's  [Rad.    Art.    Mol.    Fish.    Ecp.    Bird.  Mam.  Man.]  Arrangement. 

TUK  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS. 

fact,  that  we  cannot  in  the  present  creation  range  serially, 
as  either  higher  or  lower  in  the  scale,  at  least  two  of  these 


*  The  horizontal  lines  of  the  diagram  here  indicate,  us  in  Fig.  1,  the 
divisions  of  the  several  geologic  systems;  the  vertical  lines  represent 


46  THE    PALiEONTOLOGICAL 

divisions,  —  the  mollusca  and  articulata.  In  one  of  the 
higher  beds  of  the  Upper  Silurian  S3'stem,  —  a  bed  which 
borders  on  the  base  of  the  Old  Eed  Sandstone, — the  ver- 
tebrates make  their  earliest  appearance  in  their  fourth  or 
ichthyic  class  ;  and  we  find  ourselves  in  that  volume  of  the 
geologic  record  which  corresponds  to  Cuvier's  volume  on 
the  fishes.  In  the  manj^-folded  pages  of  the  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone, till  we  reach  the  highest  and  last,  there  occur  the 
remains  of  no  other  vertebrates  than  those  of  this  fourth 
class  ;  but  in  its  uppermost  deposits  there  appear  traces  of 
the  third  or  reptilian  class  ;  and  in  passing  upwards  still, 
through  the  Carboniferous,  Permian,  and  Triassic  Systems, 
we  find  reptiles  continuing  the  master  existences  of  the 
time.  The  geologic  volume  in  which  these  great  formations 
are  included  corresponds  to  the  Cuvierian  one  devoted  to 
the  Reptilia.  Early  in  the  Oolitic  System,  birds,  Cuvier's 
second  class  of  the  vertebrata,  make,  their  first  appearance, 
though  theii"  remains,  like  those  of  birds  in  the  present  time, 
are  rare  and  infrequent ;  and,  for  at  least  the  earlier  periods 
of  their  existence,  we  know  that  they  were, — that  they 
haunted  for  food  the  waters  of  the  period,  and  waded  in 
their  shallows,  —  onty  from  marks  similar  to  those  by  which 
Crusoe  became  first  aware  of  the  visits  paid  to  his  island  by 
his  savage  neighbors,  —  their  footprints,  left  impressed  on 
the  sands  over  which  they  stalked  of  old.  This  early 
Oolitic  volume  corresponds  in  its  contents  to  the  section  de- 
voted by  Cuvier,  in  his  great  work,  to  his  second  class,  the 
birds.     And  in  the  Stonisfield  slate,  —  a  deposit  interposed 

the  leading  divisions  and  classes  of  animals,  and,  as  shown  by  the  for- 
mation in  which  their  earliest  known  remains  occur,  the  probable 
period  of  their  first  appearance  in  creation ;  while  the  double  line  of 
text  below  exhibits  the  complete  correspondence  which  obtains  be- 
t\veen  their  occurrence  in  nature  and  the  Cuvierian  arrangement. 
The  line  representative  of  the  Radiata  ought  perhaps  to  have  been 
elevated  a  little  higher  than  either  of  its  two  neighbors. 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  47 

between  the  "  Inferior  "  and  "  Great  Oolites,"  we  detect 
the  earliest  indications  of  his  first  or  mammaliferous  class, 
apparently  represented,  however,  by  bnt  one  order, — the 
Marsupiata,  or  pouched  animals,  to  whose  special  place  in 
the  scale  I  shall  afterwards  have  occasion  to  refer.  Not 
until  we  reach  the  times  of  the  Tertiary  division  do  the 
mammals  in  their  higher  orders  appear.  The  great  Terti- 
ary volume  cori'esponds  to  those  volumes  of  Cuvier  which 
treat  of  the  placental  animals  that  suckle  their  young. 
And  finally,  —  last  born  of  creation,  —  man  appears  upon 
the  scene,  in  his  several  races  aM  varieties ;  the  sublime 
arch  of  animal  being  at  length  receives  its  keystone  ;  and 
the  finished  work  stands  up  complete,  from  foundation  to 
pinnacle,  at  once  an  admirably  adjusted  occupant  of  space, 
and  a  wonderful  monument  of  Divine  arrangement  and 
classification,  as  it  exists  in  time.  Save  at  two  special 
points,  to  vt^hich  I  shall  afterwards  advert,  the  particular 
arrangement  unfolded  by  geologic  history  is  exactly  that 
which  the  greatest  and  most  philosophic  of  the  naturalists 
had,  just  previous  to  its  discoverj^  originated  and  adopted 
as  most  conformable  to  nature :  the  ari'angements  of  geo- 
logic history  as  exhibited  in  time,  if,  commencing  at  the 
earliest  ages,  we  pursue  it  downwards,  is  exactly  that  of 
the  "  Animal  Kingdom  "  of  Cuvier  read  backwards. 

Let  us  then,  in  grappling  with  the  vast  multiplicity  of 
our  subject,  attempt  reducing  and  simplif^dng  it  by  means 
of  the  classifying  principle  ;  not  simply,  however, —  again 
to  recur  to  the  remark  of  the  metaphj-sician, —  as  an  inter- 
nal principle  given  us  by  nature,  but  as  an  external  principle 
exemplijled  by  nature.  Let  us  take  the  organisms  of  the 
old  geologic  periods  in  the  order  in  which  they  occur  in 
time  ;  secure,  as  has  been  shown,  that  if  our  chronology  be 
correct,  our  classification  will,  as  a  consequence,  be  good. 
It  will  be  for  the  natural  theologians  of  the  coming  age  to 


48  THE    PALiEONTOLOGICAL 

show  the  hearing  of  tliis  wonderful  fact  on  the  progress  of 
man  towards  the  just  and  the  solid,  and  on  the  being  and 
character  of  man's  Creator,  — to  establish,  on  the  one  hand, 
against  the  undue  depredators  of  intellect  and  its  results, 
that  in  certain  departments  of  mind,  such  as  that  which 
deals  with  the  arrangement  and  development  of  the  scheme 
of  organic  being,  human  thought  is  not  profitlessly  revolv- 
ing in  an  idle  circle,  but  progressing  Godwards,  and  gradu 
ally  unlocking  the  order  of  creation.  And,  on  the  othei 
hand,  it  will  be  equally  his  proper  business  to  demand  of 
the  Pantheist  how,  —  seeing  that  only  persons  (such  as  the 
Cuviers  and  Lindlej^s)  could  have  wrought  out  for  themselves 
the  real  arrangement  of  this  scheme,  —  how,  I  say,  or  on  what 
principle,  it  is  to  be  held  that  it  was  a  scheme  originated 
and  established  at  the  beginning,  not  by  a  personal,  but  by 
an  impersonal  God.  But  our  present  business  is  with  the 
fact  of  the  parallel  arrangements.  Divine  and  human, — 
not  with  the  inferences  legitimately  deducible  from  it. 

Beginning  with  the  plants,  let  us,  however,  remark,  that 
they  do  not  precede  in  the  order  of  their  appearance  the 
humbler  animals.     No  more  ancient  organism  than   the 

Fig.  5. 


OI.DHAMIA  antiqua;  —  the  oMcBt  known  Zoophyte. 
Wrae  Head,  Irclaud. 

Oldhamia  of  the  Lowest  Irish  Silurians,  a  plant-like  zoo- 
phyte somewhat  resembling  our  modern  sertularia,  has  yet 


xiiSTORT    OF    PLANTS. 


49 


been  detected  by  the  geologist ;  though  only  a  feA7  months 
ago  the  researches  of  Mr.  Salter  in  the  ancient  rocks  of  the 
Longmynd,  Shropshire,  previously  deemed  unfossiliferous, 
have  given  to  it  what  seem  to  be  contemporary  vegetable 
organisms,  in  a  few  ill-preserved  fucoids.  So  far  as  is  yet 
known,  plants  and  animals  appear  together.  The  long  up- 
ward march  of  the  animal  kingdom  takes  its  departure  at 
its  starting  point  from  a  thick  'forest  of  algae.  In  Bohemia, 
in  Norway,  in  Sweden,  in  the  British  Islands,  in  North 
America,  wherever,  in  fine,  what  appears  to  be  the  lowest,  or 
at  least,  one  of  tlie  lowest,  zones  of  life  has  yet  been  detected, 
the  rocks  are  found  to  be  darkened  by  the  remains  of  algae, 
so  abundantly  developed  in  some  cases,  that  they  compose, 
as  in  the  ancient  Lower  Silurians  of  Dumfriesshire,  impure 
beds  of  anthracite  several  feet  in  thickness.  Apparently, 
from  the  original  looseness  of  their  textiu-e,  the  individual 
plants  are  but  indifferently  preserved  ;  nor  can  we  expect 
that  organisms  so  ancient  should  exhibit  any  very  close 
resemblance  to  the  plants  which  darken  the  half-tide  rocks 
and  skerries  of  our  coasts  at  the  present  time.  We  do 
detect,  however,  in  some  of  these  primordial  fossils,  at  least 


Fig.  6 


PAl^OCnORDA  MrNOK. 

(One  half  nat.  size.) 


a  noticeable  likeness  to  families  familiar  to  the  modern  algae- 
ologist.     The  cord-like  plant.  Chorda  filum,  known  to  our 


60  THE    PAL^ONTOLOQICAL 

children  as  "  dead  men's  ropes,"  from  its  proving  fatal  at 
times  to  the  too  adventurous  swimmer  who  gets  entangled 
in  its  thick  wreaths,  had  a  Lower  Silurian  representative, 
known  to  the  Palaeontologist  as  the  Paloeochorda,  or  an- 
cient chorda,  which  existed  apparently  in  two  species,  —  a 
larger  and  smaller.  The  still  better  known  Chondrtis  cris- 
pus,  the  Irish  moss  or  carrageen  of  our  cookery-books,  has 
likewise  its  apparent  though  more  distant  representative  in 
Chondritis,  a  Lower  Silurian  algae,  of  which  there  seems  to 
exist  at  least  three  species.  The  fucoids,  or  kelp  weeds, 
appear  to  have  had  also  their  representatives  in  such  plants 
as  Fucoides  gracilis  of  the  Lower  Silurians  of  the  Malverns  ; 
in  short,  the  Thallogens  of  the  first  ages  of  vegetable  life 
seem  to  have  resembled,  in  the  group,  and  in  at  least 
their  more  prominent  features,  the  algae  of  the  existing 
time.  And  with  the  first  indications  of  land  we  pass  direct 
from  the  Thallogens  to  the  Acrogens,  —  from  the  sea  weeds 
to  the  fern  allies.  The  Lycopodiaceae,  or  club  mosses,  bear 
in  the  axils  of  their  leaves  minute  circular  cases,  which  form 
the  receptacles  of  their  spore-like  seeds.  And  when,  high 
in  the  Upper  Silurian  S3'stem,  and  just  when  preparing  to 
quit  it  for  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone,  we  detect  our 
earliest  terrestrial  organisms,  we  find  that  they  are  com- 
posed exclusively  of  those  little  spore  receptacles.  The  num- 
ber of  land  plants  gradually  increases  as  we  ascend  into  the 
overl^-ing  system.  Still,  however,  the  Flora  of  even  the 
Old  Red  is  but  meagre  and  poor ;  and  3'ou  will  perhaps 
permit  me  to  lighten  this  part  of  my  subject,  "\vhich  threat- 
ens too  palpably  to  partake  of  the  poverty  of  that  with 
which  it  deals,  by  a  simple  illustration. 

We  stand  at  low  ebb,  on  the  outer  edge  of  one  of  those 
iron-bound  shores  of  the  Western  Highlands,  rich  in  forests 
of  algffi,  from  which,  not  yet  a  generation  bygone,  our  Celtic 
proprietors  used  to  derive  a  larger  portion  of  their  revenucis 


d 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS. 


61 


than  from  their  fields  and  moors.  Rock  and  skerry  are 
brown  with  sea  weed.  The  long  c^-lindi'ical  lines  of  Chorda 
filum,  many  feet  in  length,  lie  aslant  in  the  tideway  ;  long 
nhaggy  bunches  of  Fucus  serratus  and  Fucus  noOosxis  di'oop 
heavily  from  the  rock  sides ;  while  the  flatter  ledges,  that 
form  the  uneven  floor  upon  which  we  tread,  bristle  thick 
with  the  stifi",  cartilaginous,  many-cleft  fronds  of  at  least  two 
species  of  chondrus,  —  the   common   carrageen,  and  the 


Fig.  7. 


Fig.  8 


'\m 


ITCOPODICM  CLAVATCM. 


EQOISETOM  FLUVIATJXE. 


smaller  species  C  Norvegicns.     Now,  in  the  thickly-spread 
fucoidsof  this  Highland  shore  we  have  not  a  -uerj^  inadequate 


52 


THE    PALjEONTOLOGICAL 


representation  of  the  first,  or  tliallogenic  vegetation,  —  that 
of  the  great  Silurian  period,  as  exhibited  in  the  rocks,  from 
the  base  to  nearly  the  top  of  the  s^'stem.  And  should  we 
add  to  the  rocky  tract,  rich  in  fucoids,  a  submarine  meadow 
of  pale  shell  sand,  covered  by  a  deep  green  swathe  of  zos- 
tera,  with  its  jointed  saccharine  roots  and  slim  flowers,  un- 
furnished with  petals,  we  would  render  it  perhaps  more 
adequately  representative  still. 

"We  cross  the  beach,  and  enter  on  a  bare  brown  moor, 
comparatively  fertile,  however,  in  the  club  mosses.  One  of 
the  largest  and  finest  of  the  species,  Lycopodium  clavatum^ 
with  its  long  scaly  stems  and  upright  spikes  of  lighter  green, 
—  altogether  a  graceful  though  flowerless  plant,  which  the 
herd-boy  learns  to  select  from  among  its  fellows,  and  to  bind 
round  his  cap,  —  goes  trailing  on  the  drier  spots  for  many 
feet  over  the  soil ;  while  at  the  edge  of  trickling  runnel  or 

Fig.  9. 


OSMC?(UA  BCGALis.    (Royal  Fern.) 


marsh}'  hollow,  a  smaller  and  less  hardy  species,  Lycopo- 
dium mundatum,  takes  its  place.  The  marshes  themselves 
bristle  thick  with  the  deep  green    horse  tail,   Equisetum 


HISTORY    OF     PLANTS. 


53 


Jluviatile,  with  its  fluted  stem  and  verticillate  series  of  linear 
branclies.  Two  other  species  of  the  same  genus,  Equisetam 
sylvnticum  and  Equisetum  arvense,  flourish  on  the  drier 
parts  of  the  moor,  blent  with  two  species  of  minute  ferns, 
the  moonwort  and  the  adder's  tongue,  —  ferns  that,  like  the 
magnificent  royal  fern  {Osmunda  regalis),  though  on  a 
much  humbler  scale,  bear  their  seed  cases  on  independent 
stems,  and  were  much  sought  after  of  old  for  imaginary 
virtues,  which  the  modern  schools  of  medicine  refuse  to 
recognize.  Higher  up  the  moor,  ferns  of  ampler  size  occur, 
and  what  seem  to  be  rushes,  which  bear  atop  conglobate 
panicles  on  their  smooth  leafless  stems ;  but  at  its  lower 
edge  little  else  appears  than  the  higher  Acrogens,  —  ferns 
and  their  allies.  There  occurs,  however,  just  beyond  the 
first  group  of  club  mosses,  —  a  remarkable  exception  in  a 
solitary  pine,  —  the  advance  guard  of  one  of  the  ancient 


Fig.  10. 


FINDS  SYI.VE8TEI3.    (Scotch  Fir.) 


forests  of  the  country,  which  may  be  seen  far  in  the  back- 
ground, clothing  with  its  shaggy  covering  of  deep  green 
the  lower  hill-slopes.     And  as  we  found  in  the  Thallogens  of 


6* 


54  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

that  littoral  zone  over  wMch  we  have  just  passed,  represent- 
atives of  the  marine  flora  of  the  Silurian  System,  from  the 
first  appearance  of  organisms  in  its  nether  beds,  to  its  bone- 
bed  of  the  Upper  Ludlow  rocks,  in  which  the  L3'Copodites 
first  appear,  so  in  the  Acrogens  of  that  moor,  with  its 
solitary  coniferous  tree,  we  may  recognize  an  equally 
striking  representative  of  the  terrestrial  flora  which  existed 
during  the  deposition  of  these  Ludlow  rocks,  and  of  the 
various  formations  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  Lower, 
Middle,  and  Upper. 

In  the  upper  beds  of  the  Upper  Silurian,  as  has  been 
already  remarked,  Lycopodites  are  the  only  terrestrial  plants, 
yet  found.     In  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone  we  find  added 
to  these,  with  Thallogens  that  bear  at  least  the  same  gen- 
eral  character  as  in  the  system  beneath,  minute  ferns,  and  a 
greatly  larger  plant,  allied  to  the  horse  tails.     The  Old  Red 
flora  seems  to  have  been  prevailingly  an  acrogenic  flora ; 
and  yet  with  almost  its  first  beginnings,  —  contemporary 
with  at  least  the  earlier  fossils  of  the  system  in  Scotland,  we 
find  a  true  polycotyledonous  tree,  not  lower  in  the  scale 
than  the   araucarites  of  the   Coal   Measures,  —  which  in 
structure  it  gi-eatly  resembles, —  or  than  the  pines  or  cedars 
of  our  own  times  (see  Fig.  3).     In  the  Middle  Old  Red 
Sandstone  there  occurs,  with  plants  representative  apparently 
of  the  ferns  and  their  allies,  a  somewhat  equivocal  and  doubt- 
ful organism,  which"  may  have  been  the  panicle  or  compound 
fruit  of  some  aquatic  rush  ;  while  in  tlie  Upper  Old  Red, 
just  ere  the  gorgeous  flora  of  the  Coal  Measures  began  to 
be,  there  existed  in  considerable  abundance  a  stately  fern, 
the  Cyclopteris  Hibernicus    (see  Fig.  2),  of  maj^hap  not 
smaller  proportions  than  our  monarch  of  the  British  ferns, 
Osmuncla  regal  is,  associated  with  a  peculiar  lepidodendron, 
and  what  seems  to  be  a  lepidostrobus,  —  possibl}^  the  fruc- 
tiferous spike  or  cone  of  the  latter,  mingled  with  carbona- 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS. 


55 


ceous  stems,  which,  in  the  simplicity  of  their  texture,  and 
thek  abundance,  give  evidence  of  a  low  but  not  scanty 

Fig.  11.  Fig.  12. 


1^^. 


CALAMITE  ? 

Of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone. 
Shetland. 
(One  eighth  nat.  size.) 


LYCOPOOITE  ?       , 

Of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone. 

Thurso. 

(Mag.  two  diameters.) 


vegetation.  Ere  passing  to  the  luxuriant  carboniferous 
flora,  I  shall  make  but  one  other  remark.  The  existing 
plants  whence  we  derive  our  analogies  in  dealing  with  the 
vegetation  of  this  early  period,  contribute  but  little,  if  at  all, 
to  the  support  of  animal  life.  The  ferns  and  their  allies 
remain  untouched  by  the  grazing  animals.  Our  native  club 
mosses,  though  once  used  in  medicine,  are  positively  dele- 


56 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


terious  ;  the  horse  tails,  though  harmless,  so  abound  in  silex, 
which  wraps  them  round  with  a  cuticle  of  stone,  that  they 
are  rarely  cropped  by  cattle ;  while  the  thickets  of  fern 

Fig.  13. 


Fekm  ?  of  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone. 

Orkney, 

(Nat.  size.) 


which  cover  our  hill-sides,  and  seem  so  temptingly  rich  and 
green  in  their  season,  scarce  support  the  existence  of  a  single 
creature,  and  remain  untouched  in  stem  and  leaf,  from  their 
first  appearance  in  spring,  until  they  di'oop  and  wither  under 
the  frosts  of  early  winter.  Even  the  insects  that  infest  the 
herbaria  of  the  botanist  almost  never  injure  his  ferns.  Nor 
are  our  resin-producing  conifers,  though  they  nourish  a  few 
beetles,  favorites  with  the  herbivorous  tribes  in  a  much 
greater  degree.  Judging  from  all  we  j'et  know,  the  eai'liest 
terrestrial  flora  may  have  covered  the  dry  land  with  its 
mantle  of  cheerful  green,  and  served  its  general  purposes, 
chemical  and  others,  in  the  well-balanced  economy  of  nature  ; 
but  the  herb-eating  animals  would  have  fared  but  ill  even 
where  it  throve  most  luxuriantly  ;  audit  seems  to  harmonize 
with  the  fact  of  its  non-edible  character,  that  up  to  the  pres- 
ent time  we  know  not  that  a  single  herbivorous  animal 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  67 

lived  among  its  shades.  From  all  that  appears,  it  may  be 
inferred  that  it  had  not  to  serve  the  purposes  of  the  floras 
of  the  passing  time,  in  which,  according  to  the  poet, 

"  The  world's  bread  depends  on  the  shooting  of  a  seed." 

The  flora  of  the  Coal  Measures  was  the  richest  and  most 
luxuriant,  in  at  least  individual  productions,  with  which  tlie 
fossil  botanist  has  formed  any  acquaintance.     Never  before 
or  since  did  our  planet  bear  so  rank  a  vegetation  as  that 
of  which  the  numerous  coal  seams  and  inflammable  shales 
of  the   carboniferous   period  form   but  a  portion  of  the 
remains,  —  the   portion   spared,  in  the  first   instance,  by 
dissipation  and  decay,  and  in  the  second  by  the  denuding 
agencies.     Almost  all  our  coal,  —  the  stored  up  fuel  of  a 
world,  —  forms  but  a  comparatively  small  part  of  the  produce 
of  this  wonderful  flora.     Amid  much  that  was  so  strange 
and  antique  of  type  in  its  productions  as  to  set  the  analogies 
of  the  botanist  at  fault,  there  occurred  one  solitary  order, 
not  a  few  of  whose  species  closel}'  resembled  their  congeners 
of  the  present  time.     I  refer,  of  course,  to  its  ferns.     And 
these  seem  to  have  formed  no  small  proportion  of  the  entire 
flora  of  the  period.     Francis  estimates  the  recent  dorsifer- 
ous ferns  of  Great  Britain  at  thirty-five  species,  and  the 
species  of  all  the  other  genera  at  six  more,  —  forty-one 
species  in  all ;  and  as  the  flowering  plants  of  the  country  do 
not  fall  short  of  fourteen  hundred  species,  the  ferns  bear  to 
them  the  rather  small  proportion  of  about  one  to  thirty- 
five  ;  whereas  of  the  British  Coal  Measure  flora,  in  which 
we  do  not  yet  reckon  quite  three  hundred  species  of  plants, 
about  a  hundred  and  twenty  were  ferns.     Three  sevenths 
of  the  entire  carboniferous  flora  of  Britain  belonged  to  this 
familiar  class  ;  and  for  about  fifty  species  more  we  can  dis- 
cover no  nearer  analogies  than  those  which  connect  them 
with  the  fern  allies.     And  if  v/ith  the  British  Coal  Measure 


58 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


we  include  those  also  of  the  Continent  of  America,  we  shall 
find  the  proportions  in  favor  of  the  ferns  still  greater.  The 
number  of  carboniferous  plants  hitherto  described  amounts, 
says  M.  Ad.  Brogniart,  to  about  five  hundred,  and  of  these 
two  hundred  and  fifty,  —  one  half  of  the  whole,  —  were 
ferns. 

Fig.  14.  Fig.  15.  Fig.  16. 


Fig.  17. 


Fig.  18. 


Fig.  19. 


FEimS  OF  THE  COAI.  U£ASDRES.* 

Rising  in  the  scale  from  the  lower  to  the  higher  vege- 
table forms  of  the  system,  —  from  its  ferns  to  its  trees,  — 
we  find  great  conifers,  —  so  great  that  they  must  have 
raised  their  heads  more  than  a  hundred  feet  over  the  soil ; 
and  such  was  their   abundance  in  this  neighborhood,  that 


•  Fig.  14,  Neuropteris  Losliii.  Fig.  15,  Neuropteris  gigantea.  Fig. 
16,  Neuropteris  acuminata.  Fig.  17,  Sphenopteris  affinis.  Fig.  18, 
Pecopteris  heterophylla.     Fig.  19,  Sphenopteris  dilitata. 


HISTORY    OF     PLANTS.  59 

one  can  scarce  examine  a  fragment  of  coal  beside  one's 
household  fire  that  is  not  charged  with  their  carbonized 
remains.  Though  marked  by  certain  peculiarities  of  struc- 
ture, they  bore,  as  is  shown  by  the  fossil  trunks  of  Granton 
and  Craigleith,  the  familiar  outlines  of  true  coniferous  trees  ; 
and  would  mayhap  have  differed  no  more  in  appearance 
from  their  successors  of  the  same  order  that  now  live  in  our 
forests,  than  these  differ  from  the  conifers  of  New  Zealand 
or  of  New  South  Wales.     We  have  thus,  in  the  numerous 

Fig.  20. 


AtTINGIA  EXCELSA. 

Norfolk  Island  Piue.    (Young  Specimen.) 

ferns  and  numerous  coniferous  trees  of  the  Coal  Measures, 
known  objects  by  which  to  conceive  of  some  of  the  more 
prominent  features  of  the  flora  of  which  they  composed  so 
large  a  part.  We  have  not  inadequate  conceptions  of  at 
once  the  giants  of  its  forests  and  the  green  swathe  of  its 
planes  and  hill-sides,  —  of  its  might}'^  trees  and  its  dwarf 
underwood, —  of  its  cedars  of  Lebanon,  so  to  speak,  and  its 
hyssop  of  the  wall.     But  of  an  intermediate  class  we  have 


60 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


Fig,  21. 


no  existing  representatives ;  and  in  this  class  tlie  fossil 

botanist  finds  puzzles  and  en- 
icrmas  with  ^vhich  hitherto  at 
least  he  has  been  able  to  deal 
with  only  indifferent  snecess. 
There  is  a  view,  however,  suf- 
ficiently simple,  which  may  be 
found  somewhat  to  lessen,  if 
not  altogether  remove,  the  dif- 
ficulty. Nature  does  not  dwell 
willing!}-  in~m€dioerity ;  and 
so  in  all  ages  she  as  certainly 
produced  trees,  or  plants  of 
tree-like  proportions  and  bulk, 
as  she  did  minute  shrubs  and 
herbs.  In  not  a  few  of  the 
existing  orders  and  families, 
such  as  the  Rosacese,  the  Le- 
guminosse,  the  M3Ttacefle,  and 
many  others,  we  have  plants 
of  all  sizes,  from  the  creeping 

Tig.  22. 


^5&.'cfe-r  Is^v^iVS '  •'.''.■;.>>j^^i 


BAST  HfDlA  TREE-FEKN.* 

{Asophila  perroUtiana.') 


SECTION  OF  STEM  OF  TREE-FERN-t 

(  Cyathea.) 


i 


•  Fig.  21,  r.  a,  Eacliis,  greatly  thickened  towards  its  base  by  numer- 
ous aerial  roots,  shot  downwards  to  the  soil,  and  which  closely  cover 
the  stem. 

f  Fig  22,  OT,  Cellular  tissue  of  tlie  centre  of  rachis ;  d,  similar  tis- 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  gj, 

herb,  half  hidden  in  the  sward,  to  the  stately  tree.     The 
wild  dwarf  strawberry  and  minute  stone-bramble  are  of  the 
same  order  as  our  finer  orchard  trees, —  apple,  pear,  and 
plum,  —  or  as  those  noble  hawthorn,  mountain  ash,  and 
wild  cherry  trees,  that  impart  such  beauty  to  our  lawns  and 
woods ;  and  the  minute  spring  vetch  and  everlasting  pea 
are  denizens  of  the  same  great  family  as  the  tall  locust  and 
rosewood  trees,  and  the  gorgeous  laburnum.     Did  there 
exist  no  other  plants  than  the  Rosaceae  or  the  Leguminosie, 
we  would  possess,  notwithstanding,  herbs,  shrubs,  and  trees, 
just  as  we  do  now.     And   in  plants  of  a  greatly  humbler 
order  we  have  instances  of  similar  variety  in  point  of  size 
The  humblest  grass  in  our  meadows  belongs  to  the  same 
natural  order  as  the  tall  bamboo,  that,  shooting  up  its  pani- 
cles amid  the  jungles  of  India  to  the  height  of  sixty  feet, 
looks  down  upon  all  the  second  class  trees  of  the  country. 
Again,  the  minute  forked  spleenwort  of  Arthur  Seat,  which 
rarely  exceeds  three  inches  in  length,  is  of  the  same  family 
as  those  tree-ferns  of  New  Zealand  and  Tasmania  that  rise 
to  an  elevation  of  from  twenty  to  thirty  feet.     And  we  know 
how  in  the  ferns  provision  is  made  for  the  attainment  and 
maintenance  of  the  tree-like  size  and  character.    The  rachis, 
which  iu  the  smaller  species  is  either  subterranean  or  runs 
along  the  ground,  takes  in  the  tree-fern  a  different  direction, 
and,  rising  erect,  climbs  slowly  upwards  in  the  character  of 
a  trunk  or  stem,  and  sends  out  atop,  year  after  3'ear,  a  higher 
and  yet  higher  coronal  of  fronds.     And  in  order  to  impart 
.he  necessary  strength  to  this  trunk,  and  to  enable  it  to  war 
for  ages  with  the  elements,  its  mass  of  soft  cellular  tissue 
is  strengthened  all  round  by  internal  buttresses  of  dense 
vascular  fibre,  tough  and  elastic  as  the  strongest  woods. 

sue  of  the  circumference ;  /,  v,  darkly-colored  woody  fibres  of  great 
strength,  the  "internal  buttresses"  of  the  illustration;  e,  the  outei 
cortical  portion  formed  by  the  bases  of  the  leaves. 
6 


62 


THE    PALiEONTOLOGICAL 


Now,  not  a  few  of  the  more  anomalous  forms  of  the  Coal 
Measures  seem  to  be  simply  fern  allies  of  the  types  Lycopo- 
dacese,  Marsileaceae,  and  Equisetum,  that,  escaping  from  the 
mediocrity  of  mere  "herbs,  shot  up  into  trees,  —  some  of 
them  very  great  trees,  —  and  that  had  of  necessity  to  be 
furnished  with  a  tissue  widely  different  from  that  of  their 
minuter  contemporaries  and  successors.  It  was  of  course 
an  absolute  mechanical  necessity',  that  if  they  were  to  pre- 

Fig.  23. 


Flf.  24. 


¥lg.». 


LEPIDODENDHON  STERNBERCn.* 


*  Fig.  23,  Branching  stem,  with  bark  and  leaves.  Fig.  24,  Extrem- 
ity of  branch.  Fig.  25,  Extremity  of  another  branch,  with  indication 
of  cone-like  receptacle  of  spores  or  seed. 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS. 


63 


sent,  by  being  tall  and  large,  a  wide  front  to  the  tempest, 
they  should  also  be  comparatively  solid  and  strong  to  resist 
it ;  but  with  this  simple  mechanical  requirement  there  seems 
to  have  mingled  a  principle  of  a  more  occult  character.  The 
Gymnogens  or  conifers  were  the  highest  vegetable  exist- 
ences of  the  period,  —  its  true  trees  ;  and  all  the  tree-like 
fern  allies  were  strengthened  to  meet  the  necessities  of 
their  increased  size,  on,  if  I  may  so  speak,  a  coniferoui 
principle.  Tissue  resembling  that  of  their  contemporary 
conifers  imparted  the  necessary  rigidity  to  their  frame- 
work ;  nay,  so  strangely  were  they  pervaded  throughout 
by  the  coniferous  characteristics,  that  it  seems  difficult  to 
determine  whether  they  really  most  resemble  the  acro- 
genous  or  gymnogenous  families.  The  Lepidodendra,  — 
great  plants  of  the  club  moss  tj'pe,  that  rose  from  fifty  to 
seventy  feet  in  height,  —  had  well  nigh  as  many  points  of 
resemblance  to  the  coniferae  as  to  the  Lycopoditcs.    The 


Fig.  26 


Fig.  27. 


CALAMITES  MOCGEOTII. 


BPHENOPHTLLCM  DENTATUM. 


Calamites,  —  reed-like,  jointed  plants,  that  more  nearly  re- 
semble the  Equisetaceae  than  aught  else  which  now  exists, 


64 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOQICAL 


but  which  attained,  in  the  larger  specimens,  to  the  height 
of  ordinary  trees,  also  manifest  very  decidedly,  in  their 
internal  strnctm-e,  some  of  the  characteristics  of  the  coni- 
fers. It  has  been  remarked  b}-  Lindley  and  Hutton  of  even 
Sphenophyllum,  —  a  genus  of  plants  with  verticillate  leaves, 
of  which  at  least  six  species  occur  in  our  Coal  Measures, 
and  which  Brogniart  refers  to  one  of  the  humblest  families 
of  the  fern  allies,  —  that  it  seems  at  least  as  nearly  related 
to  the  Coniferffi  as  to  its  lowlier  representatives,  the  Mar- 
sileacese.  And  it  is  this  union  of  traits,  pertaining  to  what 
are  now  wideh'  separated  orders,  that  imparts  to  not  a  few 
of  the  vegetables  of  the  Coal  Measures  their  singularly 
anomalous  character. 

Let  me  attempt  introducing  you  more  intimately  to  one 
of  those  plants  which  present  scarce  any  analogy  with  exist- 
ing forms,  and  which  must  have  imparted  so  strange  a 
character  and  appearance  to  the  flora  of  the  Coal  Measiu-es. 
The  Sigillaria  formed  a  numerous  genus  of  the  Carboniferous 

Fig.  28. 


SIGIXLARIA  RENITORMIS. 


period :  no  fewer  than  twentj'-two  different  species  have 
been  enumerated  in  the  British  coal  fields  alone  ;  and  such 
was  their  individual  abundance,  that  there  are  great  seams 
of  coal  which  seem  to  be  almost  entirely  composed  of  their 
remains      At  least  the  ancient  soil  on  which  these  seams 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS. 


65 


rest,  and  on  which  their  materials  appear  to  have  been 
elaborated  from  the  elements,  is  in  raanj^  instances  as  thickly 
traversed  by  their  underground  stems  as  the  soil  occupied 
b}*^  our  densest  forests  is  traversed  by  the  tangled  roots  of 
the  trees  by  which  it  is  covered  ;  and  we  often  find  associated 
with  them  in  these  cases  the  remains  of  no  other  plant- 
The  Sigillaria  were  remarkable  for  their  beautifully'  sculp- 
tured stems,  various  in  their  pattern,  according  to  their 
species-  All  were  fluted  vertically,  somewhat  like  columns 
of  the  Grecian  Doric  ;  and  each  flute  or  channel  had  its  line 
of  sculpture  running  adown  its  centre.  In  one  species  (6' 
Jlexuosa)  the  sculpture  consists  of  round  knobs,  surrounded 

Fig.  29. 


6IGtI.I.ARIA  RENIPORSIIS. 

(Nat.  size.) 


by  single  rings,  like  the  heads  of  the  bolts  of  the  ship  car- 
penter ;  in  another  {S.  reniformi's)  the  knobs  are  double, 
and  of  an  oval  form,  somewhat  resembling  pairs  of  kidneys, 
—  a  resemblance  to  which  the  species  owes  its  name.     In 

another  species  {S.  caiennlata)  what  seems  a  minute  chain 
6* 


66 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


of  distinctly  formed  elliptical  links  drops  down  the  middle 
of  each  Ante ;  in  yet  another  {S.  oculcUa)  the  carvings  are 
of  an  oval  form,  and,  hearing  each  a  round  impression  in  its 

Fig.  30. 


BIGTU.ARIA  PACBTI>£RHA. 

(One  fonrth  nat.  size.) 


centre,  they  somewhat  resemble  rows  of  staring  goggle-eyes ; 
while  the  carvings  in  3'et  another  species  {S.  pachydermd) 
consist  chiefly  of  crescent-shaped  depressions.  The  roots, 
or  rather  underground  stems,  of  this  curious  genus  attracted 
notice,  from  their  singularity,  long  ere  their  connection  with 
the  carved  and  fluted  stems  had  been  determined,  and  have 
been  often  described  as  the  ••'  stigmaria"  of  the  fossil  botanist. 
They,  too,  have  their  curious  carvings,  consisting  of  deeply 
marked  stigmata,  quincuncially  arranged,  with  each  a  little 
ring  atits  bottom,  and, in  at  least  one  rare  sj)ecies,  surrounded 
by  a  sculptured  star.  Unlike  true  roots,  they  terminate 
abniptly  ;  each  rootlet  which  they  send  forth  was  jointed  to 
the  little  ring  or  dimpled  knob  at  the  bottom  of  the  stig- 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  67 

mata ;  and  the  appearance  of  the  whole,  as  it  radiated  from 
the  central  mass,  whence  the  carved  trunk  proceeded,  some- 
what resembled  that  of  an  enormous  coach-wheel  divested 

Fitr-  31. 


STIGMARIA  FICOIDES. 

(One  fourth  nat.  size.) 

of  the  rim.  Unfortunately  we  cannot  yet  complete  our 
description  of  this  strange  plant.  A  specimen,  traced  for 
about  forty  feet  across  a  shale  bed,  was  found  to  bifurcate 
atop  into  two  great  branches, —  a  characteristic  in  which,  with 
several  others,  it  differed  from  most  of  the  tree-ferns,  —  a 
class  of  plants  to  which  Adolphe  Brogniart  is  inclined  to 
deem  it  related ;  but  no  specimen  has  j-et  shown  the  nature 
of  its  foliage.  I  am,  however,  not  a  little  disposed  to 
believe  with  Brogniart  that  it  may  have  borne  as  leaves 
some  of  the  supposed  ferns  of  the  Coal  Measures  ;  nowhere, 
at  least,  have  I  found  these  lie  so  thicklj^,  layer  above  layer, 
as  around  the  stems  of  Sigillaria  ;  and  the  fact  that,  even  in 
our  own  times,  plants  widely  differing  from  the  tree-ferns, 
—  such,  for  instance,  as  one  of  the  Cycadeae,  —  should  bear 
leaves  scarce  distinguishable  from  fern  fronds,  may  well 
reconcile  us  to  an  apparent  anomaly  in  the  case  of  an  ancient 
plant  such  as  Sigillaria,  whose  entire  constitution,  so  far  as 
it  has  been  ascertained,  appears  to  have  been  anomalous. 
The  sculpturesque  character  of  this  richly  fretted  genus  was 


68 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


shared  by  not  a  few  of  its  contemporaries.     The  Ulodendra, 
witli  their  rectilinear  rows  of  circular  scars,  and  their  stems 
covered  with  leaf-like  carvings,  rivalled 
Fig.  32.  Jq   effect  the    ornately  relieved    torus 

of  a  Corinthian  column :  Favularia, 
Knorria,  Halonia,  many  of  the  Cala- 
mites,  and  all  the  Lepidodendra,  ex- 
hibited the  most  delicate  sculpturing. 
In  walking  among  the  ruins  of  this 
ancient  flora,  the  Palaeontologist  al- 
most feels  as  if  he  had  got  among 
the   broken   fragments  of  Italian  pal- 

(One  fifth  nat.  size.)  '  o      o  &    ' 

architecture  of  Rome  was  most  ornate, 
and  every  moulding  was  roughened  with  ornament ;  and  in 


Fig.  33. 


liEPIDODENDRON  OBOVATDM. 

(Nat.  size.) 


attempting  to  call  up  in  fancy  the  old  Carboniferous  forests, 


HISTORY    OF     PLANTS.  69 

he  has  to  dwell  on  this  peculiar  feature  as  one  of  the  most 


Fig.  34 


Fig.  35. 


CYCAS  EEVOLUTA.  2AMIA  PUNGENS. 

(liecent.j 


Fig.  36, 


ZAMIA  FENEONis.    (Portland  Oolite.) 

prominent,  and  to  sec,  in  the  multitude  of  trunks  darkened 


70  THE    PALiEONTTOLOGIGAL 

al)ove  by  clouds  of  foliage,  that  rise  upon  him  in  the  pros- 
pect, the  slim  columns  of  an  elder  Alharabra,  roughened 
"with  arabesque  tracery  and  exquisite  filagree  work. 

In  the  Oolitic  flora  we  find  a  few  peculiar  features  intro- 
duced. The  C}' cadeae,  —  a  family  of  plants  allied  to  the 
ferns  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  conifers  on  the  other,  and 
which  in  then*  general  aspect  not  a  little  resemble  stunted 
palms,  —  appear  in  this  flora  for  the  first  time.  Its  coniferous 
genera,  too,  receive  great  accessions  to  their  numbers,  and 

Fig.  37. 


MANTELLIA  NIDITORMIS. 

fPortland  Dirt-bed.) 

begin  to  resemble,  more  closely  than  at  an  earlier  period, 
the  genera  which  still  continue  to  exist.  The  cypresses,  the 
yews,  the  thujas,  the  dammaras,  all  make  their  earliest  ap- 
pearance in  the  flora  of  the  Oolite.  Among  our  existing 
woods  there  seem  to  be  but  two  conifers  (that  attain  to  the 
dignit}'  of  trees)  indigenous  to  Britain,  —  the  common  yew, 
Taxus  baccata,  and  the  common  Scotch  fir,  Pinus  sylvestris; 
and  yet  we  know  that  the  latter  alone  formed,  during  the 
last  few  centuries,  great  woods,  that  darkened  for  many 
miles  together  the  now  barren  moors  and  bare  hill-sides  of 
the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  —  moors  and  hill-sides  that, 
though  long  since  divested  of  their  last  tree,  are  still  known 
by  their  old  name  of  forests.     In  the  times  of  the  Oolite, 


HISTORY    ©F    PLANTS. 


71 


on  the  other  hand,  Britain  had  from  fourteen  to  twenty 
different  species  of  conifers  ;  and  its  great  forests,  of  whose 
existence  we  have  direct  evidence  in  the  very  abundant 
lignites  of  the  system,  must  have  possessed  a  richness  and 
variety  which  ovu:  ancient  fir  woods  of  the  historic  or  human 
period  could  not  have  possessed.  With  the  Conifers  and 
the  C^'cadese  there  were  many  ferns  associated,  —  so  man}', 
that  they  still  composed  nearly  two  fifths  of  the  entu-e  flora ; 
and  associated  with  these,  tliough  in  reduced  proportions, 

Fig.  38. 


SQUISETUM  COHJMNAIIK. 

(Nat.  size.) 


we  find  the  fern  allies.  The  reduction,  however,  of  these 
last  is  rather  in  species  than  in  individuals.  The  Brora 
Coal,  one  of  the  most  considerable  Oolitic  seams  in  Europe, 
seems  to  have  been  formed  almost  exclusively  of  an  equi- 
setum,  —  E.  columnare.  In  this  flora  the  more  equivocal 
productions  of  the  Coal  Measures  are  represented  by  what 
seems  to  be  the  last  of  the  Calamites  ;  but  it  contains  no 
Lepidodcndra,  —  no  Ulodendra,  —  no  Sigillaria,  —  no  Fava 


72  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

laria,  — no  Knorriaor  Halonia.  Those  monsters  of  the  veg- 
etable world  that  united  to  the  forms  of  its  humbler  produc- 
tions the  bulk  of  trees,  had,  with  the  solitarj^  exception  of 
the  Calamites,  passed  into  extinction ;  and  ere  the  close  of 
the  S3'stem  they  too  had  disappeared.  The  forms  borne  by- 
most  of  the  Oolitic  plants  were  comparativel}-  familiar  forms. 
Witli  the  Acroirens  and  Gvmuocrens  we  find  the  first  indicu- 
tiou  of  the  Liliaceoe,  or  lily-lilvc  plants,  —  of  plants,  too, 
allied  to  the  Pandauaceae  or  screw  pines,  tlie  fruits  of  which 
are  sometimes  preserved  in  a  wonderfully  perfect  state  of 
keeping  in  the  Inferior  Oolite,  together  with  Carpolithes,  — 
palm-like  fruits,  verj-  ornatel}'  sculptured,  —  and  the  remains 
of  at  least  one  other  monocot3iedon,  that  bears  the  some- 
what general  name  of  an  Endogenite.  With  these  thera 
occur  a  few  disputed  leaves,  which  I  must  persist  in  regard- 
Fig.  39.  Fig.  40. 


CARPOLITHES  CONICA.  CAnrOLITHES  BUCKLANDII.* 

(llcdticed  one  tiiircl.) 

Ing  as  dicotjdedonous.     But  they  formed,  whatever  their 
true  character,  a  very  inconspicuous  feature  in  the  Oolitic 

*No  true  fossil  palms  have  yet  been  detected  in  the  great  Oolitic  and 
Wealden  systems,  though  they  certainly  occur  in  the  Carboniferous 
and  Permian  rocks,  and  are  comparatively  common  in  the  earlier  and 
middle  Tertiary  formations.  Much  cannot  be  founded  on  merely  neg- 
ative evidence ;  but  it  would  be  certainly  a  curious  circumstance  shoulo 
it  be  found  that  this  graceful  family,  first  uslic-red  into  being  some  time 
in  the  later  Palasozoic  periods,  was  withdrawn  from  creation  during  the 
Middle  ages  of  the  earth's  history,  to  be  again  introduced  in  greatly 
more  than  the  earlier  proportions  during  the  Tertiary  and  recent  periods 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS. 


73 


flora ;  and  not  until  the  overlying  Cretaceous  S^'stem  is 
ushered  in  do  we  find  leaves  in  any  considerable  quantity 
decidedly  of  this  high  family  ;  nor  until  we  enter  into  the 
earlier  Tertiaries  do  we  su.cceed  in  detecting  a  true  dicoty- 
ledonous tree.  On  such  an  amount  of  observations  is  this 
order  of  succession  determined,  —  though  the  evidence  is, 
of  course,  mainh'  negative,  —  that  when,  some  eight  or  ten 
years  ago,  Dr.  John  "Wilson,  the  learned  Free  Church 
missionary  to  the  Parsees  of  India,  submitted  to  me  speci- 
mens of  fossil  woods  which  he  had  picked  up  in  the  Egj-ptian 
Desert,  in  order  that  I  might  if  possible  determine  their 

Fig.  41. 


ACER  TRILOBATCM.* 

(iliocene  of  (Eningen.) 


age,  I  told  him,  ere  3''et  the  optical  lapidary  had  prepared 
them  for  examination,  that  if  they  exhibited  the  coniferous 


*  Leaf  of  a  tree  pJlied  to  the  maple. 
7 


74 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


structure,  they  might  belong  to  any  geologic  period  from  the 
times  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone  downwards ;  but 
that  if  they  manifested  in  their  tissue  the  dicotyledonous 
character,  they  could  not  be  older  than  the  times  of  the 
Tertiary.  On  submitting  them  in  thin  slices  to  the  micro- 
scope, they  were  found  to  exhibit  the  peculiar  dicotyledonous 

Fig.  42. 


ULMUS  BKONNn.* 

(Miocene  of  Bohemia.) 


structure  as  strongly  as  the  oak  or  chestnut.  And  Lieu- 
tenant Newbold's  researches  in  the  deposit  in  which  they 
occur  has  since  demonstrated,  on  stratigraphical  evidence, 
that  not  only  does  it  belong  to  the  great  Tertiary  division, 


*  Leaf  of  a  tree  allied  to  the  clin. 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS. 


75 


but  also  to  one  of  the  comparatively  modern  formations  of 
the  Tertiar3'. 

The  earlier  flora  of  this  Tertiary  division  presents  an 
aspect  widely  different  from  that  of  any  of  the  previous 
ones.  The  ferns  and  their  allies  sink  into  their  existinsr 
proportions ;  nor  do  the  coniferse,  previously  so  abundant, 
occupy  any  longer  a  prominent  place.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  dicotyledonous  herbs  and  trees,  previously  so  inconspic- 
uous in  creation,  are  largely  developed.  Trees  of  those 
Amentiferous  orders  to  which  the  oak,  the  hazel,  the  beech, 
and  the  plane  belong,  were  perhaps  not  less  abundant  in  the 
Eocene  woods  than  in  those  of  the  present  time  :  they  were 
mingled  with  trees  of  the  Laurel,  the  Leguminous,  and  the 
Anonaceous  or  custard  apple  families,  with  many  others ; 

Fig.  43. 


PAIMACITES  LAMANONIS. 

(A  Palm  of  the  Miocene  of  Aix.) 

auvl  deep  forests,  in  the  latitude  of  London  (in  which  the 
intertropical  forms  must  now  be  protected,  as  in  the  Crj^stal 
Palace,  with  coverings  of  glass,  and  warmed  by  artificial 
heat),  abounded  in  graceful  palms.  Mr.  Bowerbank  found 
in  the  London  clay  of  the  island  of  Sheppey  alone  the  fruit3 


76  THE    PALiEONTOLOarCAL 

of  no  fewer  than  thirteen  different  species  of  this  picturesque 
family,  which  lends  so  peculiar  a  feature  to  the  landscapes 
in  which  it  occurs  ;  and  ascertained  that  the  undersfrowth 
beneath  was  composed,  in  large  proportion,  of  creeping 
plants  of  the  gourd  and  melon  order.  From  the  middle  or 
Miocene  flora  of  the  Tertiary  division,  — of  which  we  seem 
to  possess  in  Britain  only  the  small  but  interesting  fragment 
detected  by  his  Grace  the  Duke  of  Argyll  among  the  trap- 
beds  of  Mull,  —  most  of  the  more  exotic  forms  seem  to 
have  been  excluded.  The  palms,  however,  still  survive  in 
no  fewer  than  thu-tj'-one  different  species,  and  we  find  in 
great  abundance,  in  the  place  of  the  other  exotics,  remains 
of  the  plane  and  buclvthorn  families,  —  part  of  a  group  of 
plants  that  in  theu-  general  aspect,  as  shown  in  the  Tertiary 
deposits  of  the  Continent,  not  a  little  resemble  the  vegeta- 
tion of  the  United  States  at  the  present  day.  The  nearer 
we  approach  to  existing  times,  the  more  familiar  in  form 
and  outline  do  the  herbs  and  trees  become.  We  detect,  as 
has  been  shown,  at  least  one  existing  order  in  the  ferns  of 
the  Coal  Measures ;  we  detect  at  least  existing  genera 
among  the  Coniferae,  Equisetaccfe,  and  C^'cadaceae  of  the 
Oolite  ;  the  acacias,  gourds,  and  laurels  of  the  Eocene, flora, 
and  the  planes,  willows,  and  buckthorns  of  the  Miocene, 
though  we  fail  to  identify  their  species  with  aught  tliat  now 
lives,  still  more  strongly  remind  us  of  the  recent  productions 
of  our  forests  or  conservatories  ;  and,  on  entering,  iu  our 
downward  course,  the  Pleistocene  period,  we  at  length  find 
ourselves  among  familiar  species.  On  old  terrestrial  sur- 
faces, that  date  before  the  times  of  the  glacial  period,  and 
underlie  the  boulder  clay,  the  remains  of  forests  of  oak, 
birch,  hazel,  and  fir  have  been  detected,  —  all  of  the  familiar 
species  indigenous  to  the  country',  and  which  still  flourish 
in  our  native  woods.  And  it  was  held  b}^  the  late  Professor 
Edward  Forbes,  that  the  most  ancient  of  his  five  existing 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  77 

British  flora,  —  that  which  occurs  in  the  southwest  of 
Ireland,  and  corresponds  with  the  flora  of  the  northwest 
of  Spain  and  the  Pyrenees,  —  had  been  introduced  into  the 
country  as  earl}',  perhaps,  as  the  times  of  the  Miocene.  Be 
this,  however,  as  it  ma}',  there  can  rest  no  doubt  on  the 
great  antiquity  of  the  prevailing  trees  of  our  indigenous 
forests. 

The  oak,  the  birch,  the  hazel,  the  Scotch  fir,  all  lived,  1 
repeat,  in  what  is  now  Britain,  ere  the  last  great  depression 
of  the  land.  The  gigantic  northern  elephant  and  rhino- 
ceros, extinct  for  untold  ages,  forced  their  way  through 
their  tangled  branches ;  and  the  British  tiger  and  hyaena 
harbored  in  their  thickets.  Cuvier  framed  an  argument  for 
the  fixity  of  species  on  the  fact  that  the  birds  and  beasts 
embalmed  in  the  catacombs  were  identical  in  ever}^  respect 
with  the  animals  of  the  same  kinds  that  live  now.  But 
what,  it  has  been  asked,  was  a  brief  period  of  three  thou- 
sand years,  compared  with  the  geologic  ages  ?  or  how  could 
any  such  argument  be  founded  on  a  basis  so  little  extended  ? 
It  is,  however,  to  no  such  naiTOw  basis  we  can  refer  in 
the  case  of  these  woods.  All  human  history  is  comprised 
in  the  nearer  corner  of  the  immense  period  which  they 
measure  out ;  and  3'et,  from  their  first  appearance  in  creation 
till  now  they  have  not  altered  a  single  fibre.  And  such,  on 
this  point,  is  the  invariable  testimon}'  of  Palfeontologic 
science,  —  testimony  so  invariable,  that  no  great  Palaeontol- 
ogist was  ever  yet  an  asserter  of  the  development  h^'pothe- 
sis.  "With  the  existing  trees  of  our  indigenous  woods  it  is 
probable  that  in  even  these  early  times  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  the  herbs  of  our  recent  flora  would  have  been  asso- 
ciated, though  their  remains,  less  fitted  for  preservation, 
have  failed  to  leave  distinct  trace  behind  them.  We  at 
least  know  generally,  that  with  each  succeeding  period 
there  appeared  a  more  extensively  useful  and  various  vege- 


\ 


78  THE    PAL^.ONTOLOGICAL 

tation  than  that  which  had  gone  before.  1  have  already 
referred  to  the  sombre,  unproductive  character  of  the 
earliest  terrestrial  flora  with  which  we  are  acquainted.  It 
was  a  flora  unfitted,  apparently,  for  the  support  of  either 
graminivorous  bird  or  herbivorous  quadruped  The  singu- 
larly profuse  vegetation  of  the  Coal  Measures  was,  with  all 
its  wild  luxuriance,  of  a  resembling  cast.  So  far  as  appears, 
neither  flock  nor  herd  could  have  lived  on  its  greenest  and 
richest  plains  ;  nor  does  even  the  flora  of  the  Oolite  seem 
to  have  been  in  the  least  suited  for  the  purposes  of  the 
shepherd  or  herdsman.  Not  until  we  enter  on  the  Tertiary 
periods  do  we  find  floras  amid  which  man  might  have  profit- 
ably labored  as  a  dresser  of  gardens,  a  tiller  of  fields,  or  a 
keeper  of  flocks  and  herds.  Nay,  there  are  whole  orders 
and  families  of  plants  of  the  very  first  importance  to  man 
which  do  not  appear  until  late  in  even  the  Tertiary  ages. 
Some  degree  of  doubt  must  alwa^-s  attach  to  merely  nega- 
tive evidence  ;  but  Agassiz,  a  geologist  whose  statements 
must  be  received  with  respect  by  every  student  of  the 
science,  finds  reason  to  conclude  that  the  order  of  the 
Rosaceae,  —  an  order  more  important  to  the  gardener  than 
almost  any  other,  and  to  which  the  apple,  the  pear,  the 
quince,  the  cheny,  the  plum,  the  peach,  the  apricot,  the 
victorine,  the  almond,  the  raspberry,  the  strawberry,  and 
the  various  brambleberries  belong,  together  with  all  the 
roses  and  the  potentillas,  —  Avas  introduced  only  a  short 
time  previous  to  the  appearance  of  man.  And  the  true 
grasses,  —  a  still  more  important  order,  which,  as  the  corn- 
bearing  plants  of  the  agriculturist,  feed  at  the  present  time 
at  least  two  thirds  of  the  human  species,  and  in  their  hum- 
bler varieties  form  the  staple  food  of  the  grazing  animals, 
—  scarce  appear  in  the  fossil  state  at  all.  They  are  pecu- 
liarly plants  of  the  human  period. 

Let  me  instance  one  other  family  of  which  the  fossil  bot- 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  79 

anist  has  not  yet  succeeded  in  finding  any  trace  m  even  the 
Tertiary  deposits,  and  which  appears  to  have  been  specially 
created  for  the  gratification  of  human  sense.  Unlike  the 
Rosacea,  it  exhibits  no  rich  blow  of  color,  or  tempting 
show  of  luscious  fruit ;  — it  does  not  appeal  very  directly  to 
either  the  sense  of  taste  or  of  sight :  but  it  is  richly  odorif- 
erous ;  and,  though  deemed  somewhat  out  of  place  in  the 
garden  for  the  last  centur}'-  and  more,  it  enters  largely  into 
the  composition  of  some  of  our  most  fashionable  perfumes. 
I  refer  to  the  Labiate  family,  —  a  family  to  which  the 
lavenders,  the  mints,  the  thymes,  and  the  hyssops  belong, 
with  basil,  rosemary,  and  marjorum,  —  all  plants  of  "gray 
renown,"  as  Shenstone  happily  remarks  in  his  description 
of  the  herbal  of  his  "  Schoolmistress." 

"  Herbs  too  she  knew,  and  well  of  each  could  speak 
That  in  her  garden  sipped  the  silvery  dew, 
Where  no  vain  flower  disclosed  a  gaudy  streak. 
But  herbs  for  use  and  physic  not  a  few, 
Of  gray  renown  within  those  borders  grew 
The  tufted  basil,  pun-provoking  thyme. 
And  fragrant  balm,  and  sage  of  sober  hue. 

'     ♦'  And  marjorum  sweet  in  shepherd's  posie  found, 
And  lavender,  whose  spikes  of  azure  bloom 
Shall  be  erewhile  in  arid  bundles  bound, 
To  lurk  amid  her  labors  of  the  loom, 
And  crown  her  kerchiefs  clean  with  meikle  rare  perfume. 

♦'  And  here  trim  rosemary,  that  whilom  crowned 
The  daintiest  garden  of  the  proudest  peer. 
Ere,  driven  from  its  envied  site,  it  found 
A  sacred  shelter  for  its  branches  here, 
Where,  edged  with  gold,  its  glittering  skirts  appear, 
With  horehound  gray,  and  mint  of  softer  green." 

AU  the  plants  here  enumerated  belongto  the  labiate  family ; 
which,  though  unfashionable  even  in  Shenstone's  days,  have 
still  their  products  favorably  received  in  the  very  best  society. 


SQ  THE    PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 

The  rosemarj',  whose  banishment  from  the  gardens  of  the 
great  he  specially  records,  enters  largely  in  the  composition 
of  eau  de  Cologne.     Of  the  lavenders,  one  species  {Laven- 
dula  vera)  j-ields  the  well  known  lavender  oil,  and  another 
{L.  latifolid)  the   spike   oil.     The  peppermint    (Meantha 
viridiis)  furnishes  the  essence  so  popular  under  that  name 
among  our  confectioners  ;  and  one  of  tlie  most  valued  per- 
fumes of  tlie  East  (next  to  the  famous  Attar,  a  product  of 
the  Rosacea)  is  the  oil  of  the  Patcliouly  plant,  another  of 
the  labiates.     Let  me  indulge,  ere  quitting  this  part  of  the 
subject,  in  a  single  remark.     There  have  been  classes  of  re- 
ligionists, not  wholly  absent  from  our  own  country,  and 
well  known  on  the  Continent,  who  have  deemed  it  a  merit 
to  deny  themselves  everj^  pleasure  of  sense,  however  inno- 
cent and  delicate.     The  excellent  but  mistaken  Pascal  re- 
fused to  look  upon  a  lovely  landscape  ;  and  the  Port  Roy- 
alist nuns  remarked,  somewhat  simply  for  their  side  of  the 
argument,  that  thej'  seemed  as  if  warring  with  Providence, 
seeing  that  the  favors  which  he  was  abundantly  showering 
upon  them,  they,  in  obedience  to  the  stern  law  of  their  lives, 
were  continually  rejecting.     But  it  is  better,  surely,  to  be 
on  the  side  of  Providence  against  Pascal  and  the  nuns,  than 
on  the  side  of  Pascal  and  the  nuns  against  Providence.    The 
gi-eat  Creator,  who  has  provided  so  wisely  and  abundantly 
for  all  his  creatures,  knows  what  is  best  for  us,  infinitely 
better  than  we  do  ourselves  ;  and  there  is  neither  sense  nor 
merit,  surelj',  in  churlishly  refusing  to  partake  of  that  ample 
entertainment,  sprinkled  with  delicate  perfumes,  garnished 
with  roses,  and  crowned  with  the  most  delicious  fruit,  Avhich 
we  now  know  was  not  onlj'  specially  prepared  for  us,  but 
also  got  read}',  as  nearl}'  as  we  can  judge,  for  the  appointed 
hour  of  our  appearance  at  the  feast.     This  we  also  know, 
that  when  the  Divine  Man  came  into  the  world,  —  unlike 
the  Port  Ro^-alists,  he  did  not  refuse  the  temperate  U3e  of 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS. 


81 


any  of  these  luxuries,  not  even  of  that  "  ointment  of  spike- 
nard, very  precious"  (a  product  of  the  labiate  family),  with 
which  Mary  anointed  his  feet.  / 

Though  it  may  at  first  seem  a  little  out  of  place,  let  us  an- 
ticipate here,  for  the  sake  of  the  illustration  which  it  affords, 
one  of  the  sections  of  the  other  great  division  of  our  subject, 
—  that  which  treats  of  the  fossil  animals.  Let  ns  run  briefly 
over  the  geologic  histor}'  of  insects,  in  order  that  we  may 

Fig.  44. 


CVCLOPnTHAr.MUS  BLCKLANDl. 

(A  Fo33il  Scorpion  of  the  Coal  Measures  of  Bo)ieiiiia.) 


mark  the  peculiar  light  which  it  casts  on  the  character  of 
the  ancient  floras.  No  insects  have  j'etbeen  detected  in  the 
Silurian  or  Old  Red  Sandstone  Systems.  Thej'  first  appear 
amid  the  hard,  drj',  flowerless  vegetation  of  the  Coal  Meas- 
ures, and  in  genera  suited  to  its  character.  Among  these 
the  scorpions  take  a  prominent  place,  —  carnivorous  arach 


82  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

nidae  of  ill  repute,  that  live  under  stones  and  fallen  trunks, 
and  seize  fast  with  their  nippers  upon  the  creatures  on  whicb 
they  prey,  crustaceans  usually,  such  as  the  wood-louse,  or 
insects,  such  as  the  earth-beetles  and  their  grubs.  With 
the  scorpions  there  occur  cockroaches  of  tj-pes  not  at  all 
unlike  the  existing  ones,  and  that,  judging  from  their 
appearance,  must  have  been  foul  feeders,  to  which  scarce 
anything  could  have  come  amiss  as  food.  Books,  manu- 
scripts, leather,  ink,  oil,  meat,  even  the  bodies  of  the  dead, 
are  devoured  indiscriminately  by  the  recent  Blatta  gigantea 
of  the  warmer  parts  of  the  globe,  —  one  of  the  most  dis- 
agreeable pests  of  the  European  settler,  or  of  war  vessels  on 
foreign  stations.  I  have  among  my  books  an  age-em- 
browned copy  of  Ramsay's  "  Tea  Table  Miscellany,"  that 
had  been  carried  into  foreign  parts  by  a  musical  relation, 
after  it  had  seen  hard  service  at  home,  and  had  become 
smoke-dried  and  black ;  and  yet  even  it,  though  but  little 
tempting,  as  might  be  thought,  was  not  safe  from  the  cock- 
roaches ;  for,  finding  it  left  open  one  day,  they  ate  out  in 
half  an  hour  half  its  table  of  contents,  consisting  of  several 
leaves.  Assuredl}',  if  the  ancient  BiattcB  were  as  little  nice 
in  their  eating  as  the  devourers  of  the  "  Tea  Table  Miscel- 
lanj^,"  they  would  not  have  lacked  food  amid  even  the  un- 
productive flora  and  meagre  fauna  of  the  Coal  Measures. 
With  these  ancient  cockroaches  a  few  locusts  and  beetles 
have  been  found  associated,  together  with  a  small  Tinea,  — 
a  creatiu'e  allied  to  the  common  clothes-moth,  and  a  Phas- 
mia,  —  a  creature  related  to  the  spectre  insects.  But  the 
group  is  an  inconsiderable  one ;  for  insects  seem  to  have 
occupied  no  very  conspicuous  place  in  the  carboniferous 
fauna.  The  beetles  appear  to  have  been  of  the  wood  and 
seed  devouring  kinds,  and  would  probably  have  found  their 
food  among  the  conifers  ;  the  Phasmidce  and  grasshoppers 
would  have  lived  on  the  tender  shoots  of  the  less  rigid 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  So 

plants  their  coutemporaries  ;  the  Tinea,  probably  on  ligne- 
ous or  cottony  fibre.  Not  a  single  insect  has  the  sj'stem 
yet  produced  of  the  now  numerous  kinds  that  seek  their 
food  among  flowers.  In  the  Oolitic  ages,  however,  insects 
become  greatly  more  numerous,  —  so  numerous  that  they 
seemed  to  have  formed  almost  exclusively  the  food  of  the 
earliest  mammals,  and  apparently'  also  of  some  of  the  flying 
reptiles  of  the  time.  The  magnificent  di-agon-flies,  the  car- 
Fig.  45. 


FOSSIL  DRAGON-IXr. 

Solenhofen. 


nivorous  tyrants  of  their  race,  were  abundant ;  and  we  no^ 
know,  that  while  they  were,  as  their  name  indicates,  dragons, 
to  the  weaker  insects,  the}'  themselves  were  devoured  bj^ 
dragons  as  trulj^  such  as  were  ever  yet  feigned  by  romancer 
of  the  middle  ages.  Ants  were  also  common,  with  crickets, 
grasshoppers,  bugs  both  of  the  land  and  water,  Ijeetles,  two- 
winged  flies,  and,  in  species  distinct  from  tlie  preceding 


84  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

carboniferons  ones,  the  disgusting  cockroaclies.  And  for 
the  first  time  amid  the  remains  of  a  flora  that  seems  to  have 
had  its  few  flowers,  —  though  flowers  could  have  formed  no 
conspicuous  featm*e  in  even  an  Oolitic  landscape,  —  we 
detect  in  a  few  broken  fragments  of  the  wings  of  butterflies, 
decided  trace  of  the  flower-sucking  insects.  Not,  however, 
until  we  enter  into  the  great  Tertiary  division  do  these 
become  numerous.  The  fii'st  bee  makes  its  appearance  in 
the  amber  of  the  Eocene,  locked  up  hermetically  in  its  gem- 
like tomb,  —  an  embalmed  corpse  in  a  er^'stal  cofiin,  — 
along  with  fragments  of  flower-bearing  herbs  and  trees. 
The  first  of  the  Bombycidre  too,  —  insects  that  may  be  seen 
suspended  over  flowers  by  the  scarce  visible  vibrations  of 
their  wings,  sucking  the  honeyed  juices  by  means  of  their 
long,  slender  trunks,  —  also  appear  in  the  amber,  associated 
with  moths,  butterflies,  and  a  few  caterpillars.  Bees  and 
butterflies  are  present  in  increased  proportions  in  the  latter 
Tertiar}^  deposits  ;  but  not  until  that  terminal  creation  to 
which  we  ourselves  belong  was  iishered  on  the  scene  did 
they  receive  their  fullest  development.  There  is  exquisite 
poetry  in  Wordsworth's  reference  to  "  the  soft  murmur  of 
the  vagrant  bee," — 

"  A  slender  sound,  yet  hoary  Time 
Doth  to  the  soul  exalt  it  with  the  chime 
Of  all  his  years ;  a  company 
Of  ages  coming,  ages  gone, 
Nations  from  before  them  sweeping." 


And  yet,  maj-hap,  the  naked  scientific  facts  of  the  history 
)f  this  busy  insect  are  scarcely  less  poetic  than  the  pleasing 
imagination  of  the  poet  regarding  it.  They  tell  that  man's 
world,  with  all  its  griefs  and  troubles,  is  more  emphatically 
a  world  of  flowers  than  any  of  the  creations  that  preceded 
it;    and   that   as  one  great  family — the  grasses — were 


HISTORY    OF    PLANTS.  85 

called  into  existence,  in  order,  apparently,  that  he  might 
enter  in  favoring  circumstances  upon  his  two  earliest  avoca- 
tions, and  be  in  good  hope  a  keeper  of  herds  and  a  tiller  of 
the  ground  ;  and  as  another  family  of  plants  —  the  Rosaceae 
—  was  created  in  oi'der  that  the  gardens  which  it  would  be 
also  one  of  his  vocations  to  keep  and  to  dress  should  have 
their  trees  "  good  for  food  and  pleasant  to  the  taste  ; "  BO- 
flowers  in  general  were  profusely  produced  just  ere  he 
appeared,  to  minister  to  that  sense  of  beauty  which  distin- 
guishes him  from  all  the  lower  creatures,  and  to  which  he 
owes  not  a  few  of  his  most  exquisite  enjoyments.  The  poet 
accepted  the  bee  as  a  sign  of  high  significance ;  the  geolo- 
gist also  accepts  her  as  a  sign.  Her  entombed  remains 
testify  to  the  gradual  fitting  up  of  our  earth  as  a  place  of 
habitation  for  a  creature  destined  to  seek  delight  for  the 
mind  and  the  eye  as  certainly  as  for  the  grosser  senses,  and 
in  especial  marks  the  introduction  of  the  stately  forest 
trees,  and  the  arrival  of  the  delicious  flowers.     And, 

'•  Thus  in  their  stations  lifting  toward  the  sky 
The  foliaged  head  in  cloud-like  majesty, 
The  shadow-casting  race  of  trees  survivx; : 
Thus  in  the  train  of  spring  arrive 
Sweet  flowers  :  what  living  eye  hath  viewed 
Their  myriads  ?  endlessly  renewed 
Wherever  strikes  the  sun's  glad  ray, 
Where'er  the  subtle  waters  stray, 
Wherever  sportive  zephyrs  bend 
Their  course,  of  genial  showers  descend." 


y 


LECTURE    SECOND. 

THE  PALiEONTOLOGICAL  HISTORY  OF  ANIMALS. 

Amid  the  unceasing  change  and  endless  variety  of  nature 
there  occur  certain  great  radical  ideas,  that,  while  they 
form,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  the  gi-oundwork  of  the 
change,  —  the  basis  of  the  variety,  —  admit  in  themselves 
of  no  change  or  variety  whatever.  They  constitute  the 
aye-enduring  tissue  on  which  the  ever-changing  patterns  of 
creation  are  inscribed  ;  the  patterns  are  ever  varying ;  the 
tissue  which  exhibits  them  forever  remains  the  same.  In 
the  animal  kingdom,  for  instance,  the  prominent  ideas  have 
always  been  uniform.  However  much  the  faunas  of  the 
various  geologic  periods  may  have  differed  from  each  other, 
or  from  the  fauna  which  now  exists,  in  their  general  aspect 
and  character,  they  were  all,  if  I  may  so  speak,  equally 
underlaid  by  the  great  leading  ideas  which  still  constitute 
the  master  types  of  animal  life.  And  these  leading  ideas 
are  four  in  number.  Firsts  there  is  the  star-like  type  of 
life,  —  life  embodied  in  a  form  that,  as  in  the  corals,  the 
sea-anemones,  the  sea-urchins,  and  the  star-fishes,  radiates 
outwards  from  a  centre;  second^  there  is  the  articulated 
type  of  life,  —  life  embodied  in  a  form  composed,  as  in  the 
worms,  crustaceans,  and  insects,  of  a  series  of  rings  united 
by  their  edges,  but  more  or  less  movable  on  each  other ; 
tliird^  there  is  the  bilateral  or  molluscan  type  of  life,  —  life 
embodied  in  a  form  in  which  there  is  a  dualitv  of  corre- 
sponding  parts,  ranged,  as  in  the  cuttle-fishes,  the  clams,  and 


HISTORY     0  F    A  N  I  M  A  L  S  .  87 

the  snails,  on  the  sides  of  a  central  axis  or  piano  ;  and 
fourth^  there  is  the  vertebrate  type  of  life,  —  life  embodied 
in  a  form  in  which  an  internal  skeleton  is  built  up  into  two 
cavities  placed  the  one  over  the  other ;  the  upper  for  the 
reception  of  the  nervous  centres,  cerebral  and  spinal,  —  the 
lower  for  the  lodgment  of  the  respiratory,  circulatory,  and 
digestive  organs.  Such  have  been  the  four  central  ideas 
of  the  faunas  of  every  succeeding  creation,  except  perhaps 
the  earliest  of  all,  that  of  the  Lower  Silurian  Sj'stem,  in 
which,  so  far  as  is  yet  known,  only  three  of  the  number 
existed,  —  the  radiated,  articulated,  and  molluscan  ideas  or 
types.  That  Omnipotent  Creator,  infinite  in  his  resources, 
—  who,  in  at  least  the  details  of  his  workings,  seems  never 
yet  to  have  repeated  himself,  but,  as  Lyell  well  expresses  it, 
breaks,  when  the  parents  of  a  species  have  been  moulded, 
the  die  in  which  they  were  cast,  —  manifests  himself,  in 
these  four  great  ideas,  as  the  unchanging  and  unchangeable 
One.  They  serve  to  bind  together  the  present  with  all  the 
past ;  and  determine  the  unity  of  the  authorship  of  a  won- 
derfully complicated  design,  executed  on  a  groundwork 
broad  as  time,  and  whose  scope  and  bearing  are  deep  as 
eternity. 

The  fauna  of  the  Silurian  Sj'stem  bears  in  all  its  three 
great  types  the  stamp  of  a  fashion  peculiarly  antique,  and 
which,  save  in  a  few  of  the  mollusca,  has  long  since  become 
obsolete.  Its  radiate  animals  are  chiefly  corals,  simple  or 
compound,  whose  inhabitants  may  have  somewhat  re- 
sembled the  sea-anemones  ;  with  zoophites,  akin  mayhap  to 
the  sea-pens,  though  the  relationship  must  have  been  a 
remote  one ;  and  numerous  crinoids,  or  stone  lilies,  some 
of  which  consisted  of  but  a  sculptured  calj-x  without  petals, 
while  others  threw  off  a  series  of  long,  flexible  arms,  that 
divided  and  subdivided  like  the  branches  of  a  tree,  and 
were  thickly  fringed  by  hair-like    fibres.     There  is  great 


88 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


Fi?.  46. 


Fig.  47. 


variety  luid  beauty  among  these  Silurian  crinoids ;    and, 

from  the  ornate  sculpture  of 
their  groined  and  ribbed  cap- 
itals and  slender  cohimns^  the 
Gothic  architect  might  borrow 
not  a  few  striking  ideas. 

The  difference  between  the 
older  and  newer  fashions,  as 
exempli  Qed  in  the  cup-shaped 
corals,   may    be    indicated    in   a 

CVATHAXONIA  DALMANl.  .  . 

Single     sentence.      The     ancient 
corals  were  stars  of  four  rays,  or  of  multiples  of  four  ;  the 

modern  corals  are  stars  of  six 
rays,  or  of  multiples  of  six. 
But  though,  at  a  certain  definite 
period,  —  that  during  which  the 
great  Palaeozoic  division  ended 
and  the  Secondary  division  be- 
gan —  nature,  in  forming  this 
class  of  creatures,  discarded  the 
number  four,  and  adopted  in- 
stead the  number  six,  the  great 
leading  idea  of  the  star  itself 
GLYPTocRiNus  DECADACTYLus.  ^^s   cqually   rctaincd    in    corals 

( Hudson  River  Group,  „     ,,  i  .         ^i  /. 

Lower  Silurian.)  .  ^^  the  modcm  as  in  those  of 
the  more  ancient  type. 
The  articulata  of  the  Silurian  period  bore  a  still  more 
peculiar  character.  They  consisted  mainly  of  the  Trilobites, 
—  a  family  in  whose  nicely-jointed  shells  the  armorer  of 
the  middle  ages  might  have  found  almost  all  the  contri- 
vances of  his  craft  anticipated,  with  not  a  few  besides  which 
he  had  faiied  to  discover ;  and  which,  after  receiving  so 
immense  a  development  during  the  middle  and  later  times 
of  the  Silurian  period,  that  whole  rocks  were  formed  almost 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS. 


89 


exclusively  of  their  remains,  gradually  died  out  in  the  times 
of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  and  disappeared  for  ever  from 
creation  after  the  Carboniferous  Limestone  had  been  de 

Fig.  48. 


CAtrMENE  BUJMENBACHIt. 


posited.  The  Palaontologist  knows  no  more  unique  family 
than  that  of  the  Trilobites,  or  a  family  more  unlike  anj- 
which  now  exists,  or   a  family  which  marks   with   more 


Fig.  49. 


Fig.  50. 


Fig.  5L 


ORTHISINA  VERNEDIU. 


IiITCITES  OORinj-ARIETia. 


trNGPLA.  i.o'wisn. 


certainty  the  early  rocks  in  which  they  occur.     And  yet, 
though  formed  in  a  fashion  that  perished  myriads  of  ages 


<s* 


50  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

ago,  how  admirably  does  it  not  exhibit  the  articulated  type 
of  being,  and  illustrate  that  unity  of  design  which,  amid 
endless  diversity,  pervades  all  nature.    The  mollusca  of  the 
Silurians  ranged  from  the  high  cephalopoda,  represented  in 
our  existing  seas  by  the  nautili  and  the  cuttle-fishes,  to  the 
low  brachipods,  some  of  whose  congeners  may  still  be  de- 
tected in  the  terebratula  of  our  Highland  lochs  and  bays, 
and  some  in  the  lingulffi  of  the  southern  hemisphere.    The 
cephalopods  of  the  system  are  all  of  an  obsolete  type,  that 
disappeared  myriads  of  ages  ago,  —  a  remark  which,  with 
the  exceptions  just  intimated,   and   perhaps  one  or  two 
others,  applies  equally  to  its  brachipods  ;  but  of  at  least  two 
of  its  intermediate  families,  —  the  gasteropoda  and  lemelli- 
brancbiata,  —  several  of  the  forms  resemble  those  of  recent 
shells  of  the  temperate  latitudes.     In  its  general  aspect, 
however,  the  Silurian  fauna,  antiquely  fashioned,  as  I  have 
said,  as  became  its  place  in  the  primeval  ages  of  existence, 
was  unlike  any  other  which  the  world  ever  saw ;  and  the 
absence  of  the  vertebrate,  or  at  least  the  inconspicuous 
place  which  they  occupied  if  they  were  at  all  present,  must 
have  imparted  to  the  whole,  as  a  group,  a  humble  and 
mediocre  character.     It  seems  to  have  been  for  many  ages 
together  a  creation  of  molluscs,  corals,  and  Crustacea.     At 
length,  in  an  upper  bed  of  the  system,  immediately  under 
the  base  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  the  remains  of  the 
earliest  known  fishes  appear,  blent  with  what  also  appears 
for  the  first  time,  — the  fragmentary  remains  of  a  terrestrial 
vegetation.     The  rocks  beneath  this  ancient  bone-bed  have 
yielded,  as  I  have  already  said,  no  trace  of  any  plant  higher 
than  the  Thallogens,  or  at  least  not  higher  than  the  Zos- 
teracea,  —  plants  whose  proper   habitat    is  the  sea ;  but, 
through  an  apparently-  simultaneous  advance  of  the  two 
kingdoms,  animal  and  vegetable,—  though  of  course  the 
simultaneousness  may  be  but  merely  apparent,  —  the  first 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS. 


91 


land  plants  and  the  first  vertebrates  appear  together  in  the 
same  deposit. 

What,  let  us  inquire,  is  the  character  of  these  ancient 
fishes,  that  first  complete  the  scale  of  animated  nature  in  its 
four  master  ideas,  by  adding  the  vertebrate  to  the  inverte- 
brate divisions?  So  far  as  is  3'et  known,  the}^  all  consist  of 
one  well  marked  order,  —  that  placoidal  order  of  Agassiz 
that  to  an  internal  framework  of  cartilage  adds  an  external 
armature,  consisting  of  plates,  spines,  and  shagreen  points 
of  solid  bone.  Either  of  the  two  kinds  of  dog-fishes  on  our 
coasts,  —  the  spiked  or  spotted,  —  ma}'  be  accepted  as  not 
inadequate  representatives  of  this  order  as  it  now  exists. 
The  Port  Jackson  shark,  however,  —  a  creature  that  to  the 


Fig.  62. 


PORT  JACKSON  SHARK. 
(Ccstracion  Phillippi.) 

uorsal  spines  and  shagreen-covered  skin  of  the  common 
dog-fish  adds  a  mouth  terminal  at  the  snout,  not  placed 
beneath,  as  in  most  other  sharks,  and  a  palate  covered  with 
a  dense  pavement  of  crushing  teeth,  —  better  illustrates  the 
order  as  it  first  appeared  in  creation  than  any  of  our  British 
placoids. 

And  lifere  let  me  adduce  another  and  very  remarkable 
instance  of  the  correspondence  which  obtains  between  the 
sequence  in  which  certain  classes  of  organisms  were  first 
ushered  into  being,  and  the  order  of  classification  adopted, 


92  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

after  many  revisions,  by  the  higher  naturalists.     Cuvier, 
with  not  a  few  of  the  ichthyologists  who  preceded  him, 
arranged  the  fishes  into  two  distinct  series,  —  the  Cartila- 
ginous and  Osseous  ;  and  these  last  he  mainly  divided  into 
the  hard  or  spinj^-finned  fishes,  and  the  soft  or  joint-finned 
fishes.     He  placed  the  sturgeon  in  his  Cartilaginous  series  ; 
while  in  his  soft-finned  order  he  found  a  place  for  the  Pol3T>- 
terus  of  the  Nile  and  the  Lepidosteus  of  the  Ohio  and  St. 
Lawrence.     But  the  arrangement,  though  it  seemed  at  the 
time  one  of  the  best  and  most  natural  possible,  failed  to 
meet   any  corresponding   arrangement  in  the   course  of 
geologic  history.     The  place  assigned  to  the  class  of  fishes 
as  a  whole  corresponded  to  their  place  in  thePalseontological 
scale  ;  — first  of  the  vertebrate  division  in  the  order  of  their 
appearance,  they  border,  as  in  the  ^^  Animal  Kingdom"  of 
the  naturalist,  on  the  invertebrate  divisions.     But  it  was 
not  until  the  new  classification  of  Agassiz  had  ranged  them 
after  a  different  fashion  that  the  correspondence  became 
complete  in  all  its  parts.     First,  he  erected  the  fishes  that  to 
an  internal  cartilaginous  skeleton  unite  an  external  armature 
of  plates  and  points  of  bone,  into  his  Placoid  order  ;  next, 
gathering  together   a  mere   handful  of  individuals   from 
among  the  various  orders  and  families  over  which  they  had 
been  scattered,  —  the  sturgeons  from  among  the  cartilagi- 
nous fishes,  and  the  lepidosteus  and  polypterus  from  among 
the  Clupia  or  herrings,  —  he  erected  into  a  small  ganoid 
order  all  the  fishes  that  are  covered,  whatever  the  consis- 
tency of  their  skeleton,  by  a  continuous  or  nearly  continu- 
ous armor  of  enamelled  bone,  or  by  great  bony  plates  that 
lock  into  each  other  at  their  edges.     Out  of  the  remaining 
fishes,  —  those  covered  with  scales  of  a  hornj'-  substance, 
and  which  now  comprise  nearly  nine  tenths  of  the  whole 
class,  —  he  erected  two  orders  more, —  a  Ctenoid  order, 
consisting  of  fishes  whose  scales,  like  those  of  the  perch,  are 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS. 


93 


pectinated  at  their  lower  edges  like  the  teeth  of  a  comb, 
and  a  Cj^cloid  order,  composed  of  fishes  whose  scales,  like 

Fig.  53.* 


Silurian. 

Old  Red. 

Carboniferous. 

Permian. 
Trinssic. 

Oolitic. 
Cretaceous. 


Tertiary. 


Placoid. 
'Ganoid. 


Ctenoid  and  Cycloid. 


Geologic  [Pla.  Gan.    Cte.  Cyc]  arraDgement. 

Agassiz's  [Pla.  Gan.    Cte.  Cyc]  arrangemciit. 

TH£  GENEAIiOGT  OF  FISHES. 

those  of  the  salmon,  are  defined  all  around  by  a  simple  con- 
tinuous margin ;  and  no  sooner  was  the  division  efiected 
than  it  was  found  to  cast  a  singularly  clear  light  on  the 
early  history  of  the  class.  The  earliest  fishes  —  firstborn 
of  their  family  —  seem  to  have  been  all  placoids.  The 
Silurian  System  has  not  yet  afibrded  trace  of  any  other  ver- 
tebral animal.  With  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  the  ganoids 
were  ushered  upon  the  scene  in  amazing  abundance  ;  and  for 
untold  ages,  comprising  mayhap  millions  ofj'ears,  the  entire 
ichthyic  class  consisted,  so  far  as  is  yet  known,  of  but  these 

*  Here,  as  in  the  former  diagrams  (Figs.  1  and  4),  the  horizontal 
lines  represent  the  divisions  of  the  great  geologic  systems ;  while  the 
vertical  lines  indicate  the  sweep  of  the  several  orders  of  fishes  across 
the  scale,  and  the  periods,  so  far  as  has  yet  been  determined,  of  their 
first  occurrence  in  creation. 


94  rHE,PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

two  orders.     During  the  times  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone, 
of  the  Carboniferous,  of  the  Permian,  of  the  Triassic,  and 

Fig.  54. 


ASfBLTPTERCS  MACROPTERUS. 

From  the  Coal  at  Saarbruck. 
(A  Ganoid  of  the  Carboniferous  System.) 

of  the  Oolitic  S^'stems,  all  fishes,  though  apparently  aa 

Fig.  65. 


1.FBIAS  CEVnALOTES. 

Cycloids  of  Aix.     (Miocene.) 


numerous  individually  as  they  are  now,  were  comprised  In 
the  ganoidal  and  placoidal  orders.     The  period  of  these 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS. 


95 


ovdors  seems  to  have  been  nearly  correspondent  with  the 
reign,  in   the  vegetable    kingdom,  of   the  Acrogens  and 

Fig.  56. 


PLATAX   ALTISSIMCS. 

A  Ctenoid  of  Monte  Bolca.     (fSocme.) 


Gymnogens,  with  the  intermediate  classes,  their  allies.     At 
Icnslh.  during  the   ages  of  the  Chalk,  the  Cycloids  and 


96  THE     PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

Ctenoids  were  ushered  in,  and  were  gi-adually  developed  !n 
creation  until  the  human  period,  in  which  they  seem  to 
have  reached  their  culminating  point,  and  now  many  times 
exceed  in  number  and  importance  all  other  fishes.     We  do 
not   see   a   stm-geon    (our   British   representative   of   the 
ganoids)  once  in  a  twelvemonth  ;  and  though  the  skate  and 
dog-fish  (our  representatives  of  the  placoids)  are  greatly  less 
rare,  their  number  bears  but  a  small  proportion  to  that  of 
the  fishes  belonging  to  the  two  prevailing  orders,  of  which 
thousands  of  boat-loads  are  landed  on  our  coasts  everyday. 
The  all  but  entire  disappearance  of  the  ganoids  from 
creation  is  surely  a  curious  and  not  unsuggestive  circum- 
stance.    In  the  human  family  there  are  races  that  have  long 
since  reached  their  culminating  point,  and  are  now  either 
fast  disappearing  or  have  alread}'  disappeared.    The  Aztecs 
of  Central  America,  or  the  Copts  of  the  valley  of  the  Nile, 
are  but  the  inconsiderable  fragments  of  once  mighty  nations, 
memorials  of  whose  greatness  live  in  the  vast  sepulchral 
mounds  of  the  far  West,  or  in  the  temples  of  Thebes  or 
Luxor,  or  the  pja-amids  of  Gizah,     But  in  the  rivers  of  these 
very  countries,  —  in  the  Polypterus  of  the  Nile,  or  the  Le- 
pidosteus  of  the  Mississippi,  —  we  are  presented  with  the 
few  surviving  fragments  of  a  dynasty  compared  Avith  which 
that  of  Egypt  or   of  Central  America  occupied  but   an 
exceedingly  small  portion  of  either  space  or  time.     The 
dynasty  of  the  ganoids  was  at  one  time  coextensive  with 
every  river,  lake,  and  sea,  and   endured  during  the  un- 
reckoned  eo7is  which  extended  from  the  times  of  the  Lower 
Old  Red  Sandstone  until  those  of  the  Chalk.     I  may  here 
mention,  that  as  there  are  orders  of  plants,  such  as  the 
Rosacea?  and  the  Grasses,  that  scarce  preceded  man  in  their 
appearance,  so  there  are  families  of  fishes  that  seem  pecu- 
liarly to  belong  to  the  human  period.     Of  these,  there  is  a 
family  very  familiar  on  our  coasts,  and  which,  though  it 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  97 

furnishes  none  of  our  higher  ichth3-ic  luxuries,  is  remarkable 
for  the  numbers  of  the  human  family  which  it  provides 
with  a  wholesome  and  palatable  food.  The  delicate  Sal- 
monidae  and  the  Pleuronectidoe,  —  families  to  which  the 
salmon  and  turbot  belong,  —  were  ushered  into  being  as 
early  as  the  times  of  the  Chalk ;  but  the  Gadidae  or  cod 
family,  — that  family  to  which  the  cod  proper,  the  haddock, 
the  dorse,  the  whiting,  the  coal-fish,  the  pollock,  and  hake, 
the  torsk,  and  the  ling  belong,  with  many  other  useful  and 
wholesome  species,  —  did  not  precede  man  by  at  least  any 
period  of  time  appreciable  to  the  geologist.  No  trace  of 
the  family  has  yet  been  detected  in  even  the  Tertiary  rocks. 
Of  the  ganoids  of  the  second  age  of  vertebrate  existence, 
—  that  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  —  some  were  remarkable 
for  the  strangeness  of  their  forms,  and  some  for  constituting 
links  of  connection  which  no  longer  exist  in  nature,  between 
the  ganoid  and  placoid  orders.  The  Acanth  family,  which 
ceased  with  the  Coal  Measures,  was  characterized,  especially 
in  its  Old  Red  species,  by  a  combination  of  traits  common 
to  both  orders;  and  among  the  extremer  forms,  in  which 
Palaeontologists  for  a  time  failed  to  detect  that  of  the  fish 
at  all,  we  reckon  those  of  the  genera  Coccosteus,  Pterich- 
thys,  and  Cephalaspis.  The  more  aberrant  genera,  however, 
even  while  they  consisted  each  of  several  species,  were 
comparatively  short-lived.  The  Coccosteus  and  Cephalaspis 
were  restricted  to  but  one  formation  apiece ;  while  the 
Pterichthys,  which  appears  for  the  first  time  in  the  lower 
deposits  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  becomes  extinct  at  its 
close.  On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  genera  that  exem- 
plified the  general  type  of  their  class  were  extremely  long- 
lived.  The  Celacauths  were  reproduced  in  many  various 
species,  from  the  times  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone  to 
those  of  the  Chalk ;  and  the  Cestracions,  which  appear  in 
the  Upper  Ludlow  Rocks  as  the  oldest  of  fishes,  continue 


98 


THE     PALJEONTOLOGICAL 


in  at  least  one  species  to  exist  still.     It  would  almost  seem 
as  if  some  such  law  influenced  the  destiny  of  genera  in  this 


Fig.  57. 


PTERICHTHT8  OBLONGUS. 

(One  half  nat.  size.) 

ichthyic  class,  as  that  which  we  find  so  often  exemplified  in 
our  species.  The  dwarf,  or  giant,  or  deformed  person,  is 
seldom  a  long  liver  ;  —  all  the  more  remarkable  instances  of 
longevit}'  have  been  furnished  by  individuals  cast  in  the 
ordinary  mould  and  proportions  of  the  species.  Not  a  few 
of  these  primordial  ganoids  were,  however,  of  the  highest 
ranli  and  standing  ever  exemplified  by  their  class  ;  and  we 
find  Agassiz  boldly  assigning  a  reason  for  their  superiority 
to  their  successors,  important  for  the  fact  which  it  embodies, 
and  worthy,  as  coming  from  him,  of  our  most  resi)ectful 
attention.     "  It  is  plain,"  we  find  him  saying,  "  that  before 


UISTOUY     OF    ANIMALS.  99 

the  class  of  reptiles  was  introduced  upon  our  globe,  the 
fishes,  being  then  the  only  representatives  of  the  tj-pe  of 
vertebrata,  were  invested  with  the  characters  of  a  higher 
order,  embodying,  as  it  were,  a  prospective  view  of  a  higher 
development  in  another  class,  which  was  introduced  as  a 
distinct  type  only  at  a  later  period  ;  and  from  that  time  the 
reptilian  character,  which  had  been  so  prominent  in  the  old- 
est fishes,  was  gradually-  reduced,  till  in  more  recent  periods, 
and  in  the  present  creation,  the  fishes  lost  all  this  herpeto- 
logical  relationship,  and  were  at  last  endowed  with  characters 
which  contrast  as  much,  when  compared  with  those  of  rep- 
tiles, as  they  agreed  closely  in  the  beginning.  Lepidosteus 
alone  reminds  us  incur  time  of  these  old-fashioned  characters 
of  the  class  of  fishes  as  it  was  in  former  days." 

The  ancient  fishes  seem  to  have  received  their  fullest 
development  during  the  Carboniferous  period.  Their  num- 
ber was  very  gi-eat :  some  of  them  attained  to  an  enormous 
size,  and,  though  the  true  reptile  had  already  appeared, 
they  continued  to  retain,  till  the  close  of  the  system,  the 
high  reptilian  character  and  organization.  Nothing,  how- 
ever, so  impresses  the  observer  as  the  formidable  character 
of  the  ofiensive  weapons  with  which  they  were  furnished, 
and  the  amazing  strength  of  their  defensive  armature.  I 
need  scarce  say,  that  the  Palaeontologist  finds  no  trace  in 
nature  of  that  golden  age  of  the  world,  of  which  the  poets 
delighted  to  sing,  when  all  creatures  lived  together  in 
unbroken  peace,  and  war  and  bloodshed  were  unknown. 
E^er  since  animal  life  began  upon  our  planet,  there  existed, 
in  all  the  departments  of  being,  carnivorous  classes,  who 
could  not  live  but  by  the  death  of  their  neighbors,  and  who 
■were  armed,  in  consequence,  for  their  destruction,  like  the 
butcher  with  his  axe  and  knife,  and  the  angler  with  his 
hook  and  spear.  But  there  were  certain  periods  in  the 
history  of  the  past,  during  Avliich  these  weapons  assumed  a 


100 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGIC AL 


do 


PLECRACANTHCS 
L^VISSIMCS. 

(Coal  J/ranure.s.) 
(Halfnat.  siie.) 


more  formidable  aspect  than  at  others ; 
and  never  were  they  more  formidable  than 
in  the  times  of  the  Coal  Measures.  The 
teeth  of  the  Rhizodus  —  a  ganoidal  fish  of 
our  coal  fields  —  were  more  sharp  and 
trenchant  than  those  of  the  crocodile  of 
the  Nile,  and  in  the  larger  specimens  fuUj'^ 
four  times  the  bulk  and  size  of  the  teeth 
of  the  hugest  reptile  of  this  species  that 
now  lives.  The  dorsal  spine  of  its  contem- 
porary, the  G^Tacanthus,  a  great  placoid, 
much  exceeded  in  size  that  of  anj^  existing 
fish :  it  was  a  mighty  spear-head  ornately 
carved  like  that  of  a  New  Zealand  chief, 
but  in  a  style  that,  when  he  first  saw  a 
specimen  in  my  collection,  greatly  excited 
the  admiration  of  Mr.  Ruskin.  But  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  weapons  of  the 
period  was  the  sting  of  the  Pleuracanthus, 
another  great  placoid  of  the  age  of  gigan- 
tic fishes.  It  was  sharp  and  polished  as 
a  stiletto,  but,  from  its  rounded  form  and 
dense  structure,  of  gi-eat  strength ;  and 
along  two  of  its  sides,  from  the  taper  point 
to  within  a  few  inches  of  the  base,  there 
ran  a  thickly-set  row  of  barbs,  hooked 
downwards,  like  the  thorns  that  bristle 
on  the  3'oung  shoots  of  the  wild  rose,  and 
which  must  have  rendered  it  a  weapon 
not  merely  of  destruction,  but  also  of  tor- 
ture. The  defensive  armor  of  the  period, 
especially  that  of  its  ganoids,  seems  to 
have  been  as  remarkable  for  its  powers  of 
resistance  as  the  offensive  must  have  been 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS. 


101 


for  their  potency  in  the  assault ;  and  it  seems  probable  that 
in  the  great  strength  of  the  bony  and  enamelled  armature 
of  this  order  of  fishes  we  have  the  secret  of  the  extremely 
formidable  character  of  the  teeth,  spines,  and  stings  that 
coexisted  along  with  it. 

Such  of  the  fishes  of  the  present  time  as  live  on  cnistacea 
and  the  shelled  molluscs,  —  such  as  the  Wrasse  or  rock-fish 
famil3',and  at  least  one  of  the  Goby  famil}-,  the  sea-wolf, — 
have  an  apparatus  of  crushing  teeth  greatly  more  solid  and 
strong  than  the  teeth  of  such  of  their  contemporaries  as  are 
either  herbivorous  or  feed  on  the  weaker  families  of  their 
own  class.  A  similar  remark  applies  to  the  ancient  sharks, 
as  contrasted  with  those  of  later  times.  So  long:  as  the 
strongly-armed  ganoidal  order  prevailed  in  nature,  the  sharks 
were  furnished  with  massive  crushing  teeth  ;  but  when  the 
ganoids  waned  in  creation,  and  the  soft-scaled  cycloid  and 
ctenoid  orders  took  and  amply  filled  the  place  which  they 
had  left  vacant,  the  well  known  modern  form  of  sharks' 


Fig.  59. 


Fig.  60. 


CARCHARIAS   PKODi:CTU8. 

Cutting  Tooth.    {Miocene.) 


PLACODUS  GIGAS. 

Crusliing  Teeth.    {Trinx. 


teeth  was  introduced,  —  a  form  much  rather  suited  for  cutting 

soft  bodies  than  for  crushing  hard  ones.    In  fine,  the  offensive 

weapons  of  the  times  of  the  Coal  Measures  seem  very  for- 
9* 


102  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGIC  AL 

midable,  just  as  those  personal  weapons  of  the  middle  ages 
seem  so  that  were  borne  at  a  time  when  every  soldier  took 
the  field  cased  in  armor  of  proof.  The  slim  scimitar  or 
slender  rapier  would  have  availed  but  little  against  mas- 
sive iron  helmets  or  mail  coats  of  tempered  steel.  And  so 
the  warriors  of  the  period  armed  themselves  with  ponderous 
maces,  battle-axes  as  massive  as  hammers,  and  double- 
handed  swords  of  great  weight  and  strength. 

Before  passing  onwards  to  other  and  higher  classes  and 
orders,  as  they  occurred  in  creation,  permit  me  to  make  the 
formidable  armor  of  the  earlier  fishes,  offensive  and  defen- 
sive, the  subject  of  a  single  remark.     We   are    told  by 
Goethe,  in  his  autobiographj",  that  he  had  attained   his 
sixth  year  when  the  terrible  earthquake  at  Lisbon  took 
place,  —  "an  event,"  he  says,  "which  greatly  disturbed " 
his  "  peace  of  mind  for  the  first  time."     He  could  not  rec- 
oncile a  catastrophe  so  suddenly  destructive  to  thousands, 
with  the  ideas  which  he  had  already  formed  for  himself  of 
a  Providence  all-powerful  and  all-benevolent.     But  he  after- 
wards learned,  he  tells  us,  to  recognize  in  such  events  the 
"  God  of  the  Old  Testament."     I  know  not  in  what  spirit 
the  remark  was  made  ;  but  this  I  know,  that  it  is  the  God 
of  the  Old  Testament  whom  we  see  exhibited  in  all  nature 
and  all  providence  ;  and  that  it  is  at  once  wisdom  and  duty 
in  his  rational  creatures,  however  darkl}^  thej'  ma^^  perceive 
or  imperfectly  they  may  comprehend,  to  hold  in  implicit 
faith  that  the  Adorable  Monarch  of  all  the  past  and  of  all 
the  future  is  a  King  who  "  can  do  no  wrong."     This  e&rly 
exhibition  of  tooth,  and  spine,  and  sting,  —  of  weapons 
constructed  alilie  to  cut  and  to  pierce,  —  to  unite  two  of 
the  most   indispensable  requirements  of   the  modern  ar- 
morer, —  a  keen  edge  to  a  strong  back,  —  nay,  stranger  still, 
the  examples  furnished  in  this  primeval  time,  of  weapons 
formed  not  only  to  kill,  but  also  to  torture',  —  must  be  alto- 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  103 

getlier  at  variance  with  the  preconceived  opinions  of  those 
who  hold  that  until  man  appeared  in  creation,  and  dark- 
ened its  sympathetic  face  with  the  stain  of  moral  guilt,  the 
reign  of  violence  and  outrage  did  not  begin,  and  that  there 
was  no  death  among  the  inferior  creatures,  and  no  suifering. 
But  preconceived  opinion,  whsther  it  hold  fast,  with  Lac- 
tantius  and  the  old  Schoolmen,  to  the  belief  that  there  can 
be  no  antipodes,  or  assert,  with  Caccini  and  Bellarmine, 
that  our  globe  hangs  lazil}^  in  the  midst  of  the  heavens, 
while  the  sun  moves  round  it,  must  yield  ultimately  to 
scientific  truth.  And  it  is  a  truth  as  certain  as  the  exist- 
ence of  a  southern  hemisphere,  or  the  motion  of  the  earth 
round  both  its  own  axis  and  the  great  solar  centre,  that, 
untold  ages  ere  man  had  sinned  or  suffered,  the  animal 
creation  exhibited  exactly  its  present  state  of  war,  —  that 
the  strong,  armed  with  formidable  weapons,  exquisitely 
constructed  to  kill,  preyed  upon  the  weak ;  and  that  the 
weak,  sheathed,  many  of  them,  in  defensive  armor  equally 
admirable  in  its  mechanism,  and  ever  increasing  and  multi- 
plying upon  the  earth  far  beyond  the  requirements  of  the 
mere  maintenance  of  their  races,  were  enabled  to  escape,  as 
species,  the  assaults  of  the  tyrant  tribes,  and  to  exist  un- 
thinned  for  unreckoned  ages.  It  has  been  weaklj'  and 
impiously  urged,  —  as  if  it  were  merely  with  the  geologist 
that  man  had  to  settle  this  matter,  —  that  such  an  economy 
of  warfare  and  suffering,  —  of  Avarring  and  of  being  warred 
upon,  —  would  be,  in  the  words  of  the  infant  Goethe,  un- 
worthy of  an  all-powerful  and  all-benevolent  Providence, 
and  in  effect  a  libel  on  his  government  and  character.  But 
that  grave  charge  we  leave  the  objectors  to  settle  with  the 
great  Creator  himself.  Be  it  theirs,  not  ours,  according  to 
the  poet,  to 

"  Snatch  from  his  hand  the  balance  and  the  rod, 
Rejudge  Ids  justice,  be  the  god  of  God." 


104  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

Be  it  enough  for  the  geologist  rightly  to  interpret  thb 
record  of  creation,  —  to  declare  the  truth  as  he  finds  it,  — 
to  demonstrate,  from  evidence  no  clear  intellect  ever  yet 
resisted,  that  he,  the  Creator,  from  whom  even  the  young 
lions  seek  their  food,  and  who  giveth  to  all  the  beasts,  gi'eat 
and  small,  their  meat  in  due  season,  ever  wrought  as  he 
now  works  in  his  animal  kingdom,  —  that  he  gave  to  the 
primeval  fishes  their  spines  and  their  stings,  —  to  the  pri- 
meval reptiles  their  trenchant  teeth  and  their  strong  armor 
of  bone,  —  to  the  primeval  mammals  their  great  tusks  and 
their  sharp  claws,  — that  he  of  old  divided  all  his  creatures, 
as  now,  into  animals  of  prey  and  the  animals  pre^-ed  upon, 
—  that  from  the  beginning  of  things  he  inseparably  estab- 
lished among  his  non-responsible  existences  the  twin  laws 
of  generation  and  of  death,  —  nay,  further,  passing  from 
the  established  truths  of  Geologic  to  one  of  the  best  estab- 
lished truths  of  Theologic  science,  —  God's  eternal  justice 
and  truth,  —  let  us  assert,  that  in  the  Divine  government 
the  matter  of  fact  alwa^-s  determines  the  question  of  right, 
and  that  whatever  has  been  done  by  him  who  rendereth 
no  account  to  man  of  his  matters,  he  had  in  all  ages,  and 
in  all  places,  an  unchallengeable  right  to  do. 

The  oldest  known  reptiles  appear  just  a  little  before  the 
close  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  just  as  the  oldest  known 
fishes  appeared  just  a  little  before  the  close  of  the  Silurian 
System.  What  seems  to  be  the  Upper  Old  Red  of  our 
own  country,  though  there  still  hangs  a  shade  of  doubt  on 
the  subject,  has  furnished  the  remains  of  a  small  reptile, 
equally  akin,  it  would  appear,  to  the  lizards  and  the  batra- 
chians  ;  and  what  seems  to  be  the  Upper  Old  Red  of  the 
United  States  has  exhibited  the  foot-tracks  of  a  larger 
animal  of  the  same  class,  which  not  a  little  resemble  those 
which  would  be  impressed  on  recent  sand  or  clay  by  the 
alligator  of  the  Mississippi,  did  not  the  alligator  of  the 


I 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  IQo 

Mississippi  efface  its  own  footprints  (a  consequence  of  the 
shortness  of  its  legs)  b}'  the  trail  of  its  abdomen.  In  the 
Coal  Measures,  the  reptiles  hitherto  found,  —  and  it  is  still 
little  more  than  ten  jears  since  the  first  was  detected, — 
are  all  allied,  though  not  without  a  cross  of  the  higher 
crocodilian  or  lacertian  nature,  to  the  batrachian  order,  — 
that  lowest  order  of  the  reptiles  to  which  the  frogs,  newts, 
and  salamanders  belong.  Those  reptiles  of  the  carbonifer- 
ous era,  though  only  a  few  twelvemonths  ago  we  little  sus- 
pected the  fact,  seem  to  have  been  not  very  rare  in  our  own 
neighborhood.  My  attention  was  called  some  time  since 
by  Mr.  Henry  Cadell,  —  an  intelligent  practical  geologist, 

—  to  certain  appearances  in  one  of  the  Duke  of  Buccleuch'g 
coal  pits  near  Dalkeith,  which  he  regarded  as  the  tracks  of 
air-breathing  quadrupeds  ;  and,  after  examining  a  specimen, 
containing  four  footprints,  which  he  had  brought  above 
gi'ound,  and  which  not  a  little  excited  my  curiosity,  we 
visited  the  pit  together.  And  there,  in  a  side  working 
about  half  a  mile  from  the  pit  rnouth,  and  about  four  hun- 
dred feet  under  the  surface,  I  found  the  roof  of  the  coal, 
which  rose  at  a  high  angle,  traversed  by  so  many  foot- 
tracks,  upwards,  downwai-ds,  and  athwart,  that  it  cost  me 
some  little  care  to  trace  the  individual  lines.  At  least  one 
of  the  number,  however,  —  consisting  of  eleven  footprints 
of  the  right  and  as  many  of  the  left  foot,  —  I  was  able  to 
trace  from  side  to  side  of  the  working,  a  distance  of  four 
yards ;  and  several  of  the  others  for  shorter  spaces.  The 
prints,  which  were  reverses  or  casts  in  a  ver}'  coarse  sand- 
stone, were  about  thirteen  inches  apart  across  the  creature's 
chest,  and  rather  more  than  a  foot  apart  from  its  fore  to  its 
hinder  limbs.     Thej^  were  alternately  larger  and  smaller, 

—  the  smaller  (those  of  the  fore  feet)  measuring  about  four 
inches  in  length,  and  the  larger  (those  of  the  hinder  feet) 
about  six  inches.     The  number  of  toes  seemed  to  be  alter- 


106  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

nately  four  and  five ;  but  from  the  circumstance  that  the 
original  matrix  on  which  the  tracks  had  been  impressed,  — 
a  micaceous  clay  resolved  into  a  loose  fissile  sandstone,  — 
had  fallen  away  in  the  working  of  the  pit,  leaving  but  the 
boldly-relieved  though  ill-defined  casts  on  the  coarse  sand- 
stone, I  could  not  definitely  determine  the  point.     Enough, 
however,  remained  to  show  that  at  that  spot,  —  little  more 
than  a  mile  from  where  the  Duke  of  Buccleuch's  palace  now 
stands,  —  large  reptiles  had  congregated  in  considerable 
numbers  shortly  after  the  great  eight  feet  coal  seam  of  the 
Dalkeith  basin  had  been  formed.     In  another  part  of  the 
pit  I  found  foot-tracks  of  apparently  the  same  animal  in 
equal  abundance,  but  still  less  distinct  in  their  state  of 
keeping.     But  they  bore  testimonj'  with  the  others  to  the 
comparative  abundance  of  reptilian  life  at  an  early  period, 
when  the  coal-bearing  strata  of  the  empu-e  were  little  more 
than  half  deposited.     It  was  not,  however,  until  the  Per- 
mian and  Triassic  Systems  had  come  to  a  close,  and  even 
the  earlier  ages  of  the  Oolitic  System  had  passed  away, 
that  the  class  received  its  fullest  development  in  creation. 
And  certainly  very  wonderful  was  the  development  which 
it  then  did  receive.     Reptiles  became  everywhere  the  lords 
and  masters  of  this   lower  world.     When   any  class  of 
the  air-breathing  vertebrates  is  very  largely  developed,  we 
find  it  taking  possession  of  all  the  three  old  terrestrial  ele- 
ments,—  earth,  air,  and  water.     The  human  period,  for 
instance,  like  that  which  immediately  preceded  it,  is  pecu- 
liarly a  period  of  mammals  ;  and  we  find  the  class,  /ree,  if  I 
may  so  express  myself,  of  the  three  elements,  disputing 
possession  of  the  sea  with  the  fishes,  in  its  Cetaceans,  its 
seals,  and  its  sea-lions,  and  of  the  air  with  the  birds,  in  its 
numerous  genera  of  the  bat  family.     Further,  not  until  the 
great  mammaliferous  period  is  fairly  ushered  in  do  either 
the  bats  or  the  whales  make  their  appearance  in  creation. 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  107 

Remains  of  Oolitic  reptiles  have  been  mistaken  m  more 
than  one  instance  for  those  of  Cetacea  ;  bat  it  is  now  gener- 
ally held  that  the  earliest  known  specimens  of  the  family 
belong  to  the  Tertiary  ages,  while  those  of  the  oldest  bats 

Fig.  61. 


VESPERTILIO   PARISIENSIS. 

A  Bat  of  the  Eocene. 


occur  in  the  Eocene  of  the  Paris  Basin,  associated  with 
the  bones  of  dolphins,  lamantines,  and  morses.  Now,  in 
the  times  of  the  Oolite  it  was  the  reptilian  class  that  pos- 


Fig.  62. 


ICHTIIVOSAL'KUS   COMMITNIS. 

{Lias.) 


sessed  itself  of  all  the  elements.     Its  gigantic  enaliosaurs, 
huge  reptilian  ivhales  mounted  on  paddles,  were  the  tyrants 


108  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

of  the   ocean,  and  must  have  reigned  supreme  over  the 
already  reduced  class  of  fishes  ;  its  pterodactyles,  —  drag- 
Fig.  63. 


PLESIOSAIJBIS   DOLIRUODF.IRU8. 

(Lias.) 


ons  as  stiange  as  were  ever  feigned  by  romancer  of  the 

Fig.  64. 


PTERODACTTLUS  CRASSIRO.STKIS, 

(Oolite.) 


middle  ages,  and  that  to  the  jaws  and  teeth  of  the  croco- 
dile added  the  wings  of  a  bat  and  the  bod}'  and  tail  of  an 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  109 

ordinary  mammal,  had  "  the  power  of  the  air,"  and,  pur- 
suing the  fleetest  insects  in  their  flight,  captured  and  bore 
them  down  ;*  its  lakes  and  rivers  abounded  in  crocodiles 
and  fresh  water  tortoises  of  ancient  tj-pe  and  fashion  ;  and 
its  woods  and  plains  were  the  haunts  of  a  strange  reptilian 
fauna  of  what  has  been  well  termed  "  fearfully  great  lizards," 
—  some  of  which,  such  as  the  iguanodon,  rivalled  the  largest 
elephant  in  height,  and  greatlj^  more  than  rivalled  him  in 
length  and  bulk.  Judging  from  what  remains,  it  seems  not 
improbable  that  the  reptiles  of  this  Oolitic  period  were 

Fig.  65. 


CHELONIA  KENSTEDI. 

(^Chalk.) 

quite  as  numerous  individuallj^,  and  consisted  of  well  nigh 
as  many  genera  and  species,  as  all  the  mammals  of  the 

*  Some  of  these  draff07isof  the  Secondary  ageswere  of  very  consider- 
able size.  The  wings  of  a  Pterodactyle  of  the  Chalk,  in  the  possession  of 
Mr.  Bowerbank,  must  have  had  a  spread  of  about  eighteen  feet ;  those  of 
a  recently  discovered  Pterodactyle  of  the  Greensand,  a  spread  of  not  less 
than  twenty-seven  feet.  The  Lammer-geyer  of  the  Alps  has  an  extent  of 
wing  of  but  from  ten  to  eleven  feet ;  while  that  of  the  great  Condor  of 
the  Andes,  the  largest  of  flying  birds,  does  not  exceed  twelve  feet. 
lU 


110  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

present  time.  In  the  cretaceous  ages,  the  class,  though 
still  the  dominant  one,  is  visibly  reduced  in  its  standing ;  it 
had  reached  its  culminating  point  in  the  Oolite,  and  then 
began  to  decline  ;  and  with  the  first  dawn  of  the  Tertiary 
division  we  find  it  occupying,  as  now,  a  very  subordinate 
place  in  creation.  Curiously  enough,  it  is  not  until  its 
times  of  humiliation  and  decay  that  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  of  its  orders  appears,  —  an  order  itself  illustra- 
tive of  extreme  degradation,  and  which  figures  largely,  in 
every  scheme  of  mythology  that  borrowed  through  tradi- 
tional channels  from  Divine  revelation,  as  a  meet  represent- 
ative of  man's  great  enemy,  the  Evil  One.  I  of  course 
refer  to  the  ophidian  or  serpent  family.  The  earliest  ophid- 
ian remains  known  to  the  Palasontologist  occur  in  that 
ancient  deposit  of  the  Tertiar}^  division  known  as  the  Lon- 
don Clay,  and  must  have  belonged  to  serpents,  some  of 
them  allied  to  the  Pythons,  some  to  the  sea-snakes,  which, 
judging  from  the  corresponding  parts  of  recent  species, 
must  have  been  from  fourteen  to  twenty  feet  in  length. 

Fig.  66. 


PAL^OPHIS     TOLIAPICUS. 

(  Ophidian  of  the  Eocene.) 

And  here  let  us  again  pause  for  a  moment,  to  remark 
how  strangely  these  ii'ascible,  repulsive  reptiles,  —  creatures 
lengthened  out  far  beyond  the  proportions  of  the  other 
members  of  their  class  by  mere  vegetative  repetitions  of 
the  vertebrae,  —  condemned  to  derive,  worm-like,  their  abil- 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  1 )  I 

Ity  of  progi-essive  motion  from  the  ring-like  scutes  of  the 
abdomen, — venomous  in  many  of  their  species,  — formidable 
in  others  to  even  the  noblest  animals,  from  their  fascinating 
powers  and  their  great  craft,  —  without  fore  or  hinder  limbs, 
without  thoracic  or  pelvic  arches,  —  the  very  tj^pes  and  ex- 
emplars (our  highest  naturalists  being  the  judges)  of  the 
extreme  of  animal  degradation,  —  let  us,  I  say,  remark  how 
strangely  then"  history  has  been  mixed  up  with  that  of  man 
and  of  religion  in  all  the  older  mythologies,  and  in  that 
Divine  Revelation  whence  the  older  mythologies  were  de- 
rived. It  was  one  of  the  most  ancient  of  the  Phoenician 
fables,  that  the  great  antagonist  of  the  gods  was  a  gigantic 
serpent,  that  had  at  one  time  been  their  subject,  but  revolted 
against  them  and  became  their  enemy.  It  was  a  monstrous 
serpent  that  assailed  and  strove  to  destroy  the  mother  of 
Apollo  ere  yet  the  birth  of  the  god,  but  which,  long  after, 
Apollo  in  turn  assaulted  and  slew.  It  was  a  great  serpent 
that  watched  over  the  apples  of  the  Hesperides,  and  that 
Hercules,  ere  he  could  possess  himself  of  the  fruit,  had  to 
combat  and  kill.  It  was  a  frightful  serpent  that  guarded 
the  golden  fleece  from  Jason,  and  which  the  hero  had  to 
destro}''  in  the  first  instance,  and  next  to  exterminate  the 
strange  brood  of  armed  men  that  sprang  up  from  its  sown 
teeth.  In  short,  the  old  mythologies  are  well  nigh  as  full 
of  the  serpent  as  those  ancient  Runic  obelisks  of  our  coun- 
try, whose  endless  knots  and  complicated  fretwork  are 
formed  throughout  of  the  interlacings  :f  snakes.  Let  us, 
however,  accept  as  representatives  of  this  innumerable  class 
of  legends,  the  classical  story,  rendered  yet  more  classical 
by  the  profound  and  reverend  comment  given  by  Bacon  in 
his  "  Wisdom  of  the  Ancients."  "  Jupiter  and  the  other 
gods,"  says  the  philosopher,  in  his  simple  version  of  the 
tradition,  "  conferred  upon  men  a  most  acceptable  and  de- 
sirable boon,  — the  gift  of  perpetual   youth.     But  men, 


V 


112  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

foolishly  overjoyed  hereat,  laid  this  present  of  the  gods  upon 
an  ass,  who,  in  returning  back  with  it,  being  extremely 
thirsty,  and  coming  to  a  fountain,  the  serpent  who  was  guar- 
dian thereof  would  not  suffer  him  to  drink  but  upon  condi- 
tion of  receiving  the  burden  he  carried,  whatever  it  should 
be.  The  silly  ass  complied  ;  and  thus  the  perpetual  renewal 
of  youth  was  for  a  sup  of  water  transferred  from  men  to  the 
race  of  serpents."  "  That  this  gift  of  perpetual  youth 
should  pass  from  men  to  serpents,"  continues  Bacon,  "  seems 
added,  by  way  of  ornament  and  illustration,  to  the  fable." 
And  it  certainly  has  much  the  appearance  of  an  after- 
thought. But  how  very  striking  the  resemblance  borne  by 
the  story,  as  a  whole,  to  that  narrative  in  the  opening  page 
of  human  history  which  exhibits  the  first  parents  of  the  race 
as  yielding  up  to  the  temptation  of  the  serpent  the  gift  of 
immortality  ;  and  further,  how  remarkable  the  fact,  that  the 
reptile  selected  as  t3'pical  here  of  the  great  fallen  spirit  that 
kept  not  his  fii'st  estate,  should  be  at  once  the  reptile  of 
latest  appearance  in  creation,  and  the  one  selected  by  phil- 
osophical naturalists  as  representative  of  a  reversed  process 
in  the  course  of  being,  —  of  a  downward,  sinking  career, 
from  the  vertebrate  antetype  towards  greatly  lower  t3'pes 
in  the  invertebrate  divisions !  The  fallen  spirit  is  repre- 
sented in  revelation  by  what  we  are  now  taught  to  recog- 
nize in  science  as  a  degraded  reptile. 

Birds  make  their  first  appearance  in  a  Red  Sandstone  de- 
posit of  the  United  States  in  the  valley  of  the  Connecticut, 
which  was  at  one  time  supposed  to  belong  to  the  Triassic 
System,  but  which  is  now  held  to  be  at  least  not  older  than 
the  times  of  the  Lias.  No  fragments  of  the  skeletons  of 
birds  have  yet  been  discovered  in  formations  older  than  the 
Chalk  :  the  Connecticut  remains  are  those  of  footprints  ex- 
clusively ;  and  3'et  they  tell  their  extraordinary  story,  so  far 
as  it  extends,  with  remarkable  precision  and  distinctness. 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  113 

They  were  apparently  all  of  the  Grallae  or  stilt  order  of 
birds,  —  an  order  to  which  the  cranes,  herons,  and  bastards. 

Fig.  67. 


BIRD  TRACKS  OF  THE  CONNECTICUT. 

(£ias  or  Oolite.) 

belong,  with  the  ostriches  and  cassowaries,  and  which  is 
characterized  by  possessing  but  three  toes  on  each  foot  (one 
species  of  ostrich  has  but  two) ,  or,  if  a  fourth  toe  be  present, 
so  imperfect!}'"  is  it  developed  in  most  of  the  cases,  that  it 
fails  to  reach  the  ground.  And  in  almost  all  the  footprints 
of  the  primeval  birds  of  the  Connecticut  there  are  only 
three  toes  exhibited.  Peculiar,  ill  understood  laws  regulate 
the  phalangal  divisions  of  the  various  animals.  It  is  a  law 
of  the  human  kind,  for  instance,  that  the  thumb  should 
10* 


114  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

consist  of  but  three  phalanges  ;  while  the  fingers,  even  the 
smallest,  consist  of  four.  And,  in  the  same  wa}',  it  is  u  law 
generally  exemplified  among  birds,  that  of  the  three  toes 
which  correspond  to  the  fingers,  the  inner  toe  should  be 
composed  of  three  phalanges,  the  middle  or  largest  toe  of 
four  phalanges,  and  the  outer  toe,  though  but  second  in 
point  of  size,  of  five  phalanges.  Such  is  the  law  notv,  and 
such  was  equally  the  law,  as  shown  by  the  American  foot- 
prints, in  the  times  of  the  Lias.     Some  of  the  impressions 

Fig.  68- 


FOSSTL  FOOTPRINT. 

Connecticut. 


are  of  singular  distinctness.  Every  claw  and  phalange  has 
left  its  mark  in  the  stone ;  while  the  trifid  termination  of 
the  tarso-metatarsalbone  leaves  three  marks  more, —  fifteen 
in  all,  —  the  true  ornithic  number.  In  some  of  the  speci- 
mens even  the  pressure  of  a  metatarsal  brush,  still  possessed 
by  some  birds,  is  distinctly  traceable ;  nay,  there  are  in- 
stances in  which  the  impress  of  the  deiTQoid  papillae  has 
remained  as  sharply  as  if  made  in  wax.  But  the  immense 
size  of  some  of  these  footprints  served  to  militate  for  a  time 
against  belief  in  their  ornithic  origin.     The  impressions  that 


■*o' 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  US 

are  but  secondary  in  point  of  size  greatly  exceed  those  of 
the  hugest  birds  which  now  exist ;  while  those  of  the  largest 
class  equal  the  prints  of  the  bulkier  quadrupeds.  There  are 
tridact3'le  footprints  in  the  red  sandstones  of  Connecticut 
that  measure  eighteen  inches  in  length  from  the  heel  to  the 
middle  claw,  nearly  thirteen  inches  in  breadth  from  the  outer 
to  the  inner  toe,  and  which  indicate,  from  their  distance 
apart  in  the  straight  line,  a  stride  of  about  six  feet  in  the 
creature  that  impressed  them  in  these  ancient  sands,  — 
measurements  that  might  well  startle  zoologists  who  had 
derived  their  experience  of  the  ornithic  class  from  existing 
birds  exclusively.  Comparatively  recent  discoveries  have, 
however,  if  not  lessened,  at  least  familiarized  us  to  the  won- 
der. In  a  deposit  of  New  Zealand  that  dates  little  if  at  all 
in  advance  of  the  human  period,  there  have  been  detected 
the  remains  of  birds  scarce  inferior  in  size  to  those  of 
America  in  the  Liassic  ages.  The  bones  of  the  Dinornus 
giganteus,  exhibited  by  the  late  Dr.  Mantell  in  Edinburgh 
in  the  autumn  of  1850,  greatly  exceeded  in  bulk  those  of 
the  largest  horse.  A  thigh  bone  sixteen  inches  in  length 
measured  nearly  nine  inches  in  circumference  in  the  middle  of 
the  shaft :  the  head  of  a  tibia  measured  twentj'-one  mches  in 
circumference.  It  was  estimated  that  a  foot  entire  in  all  its 
parts,  which  formed  an  interesting  portion  of  the  exhibition, 
would,  when  it  was  furnished  with  nails,  and  covered  by  the 
integuments,  have  measured  about  fifteen  inches  in  length ; 
and  it  was  calculated  by  a  very  competent  authority,  Pro- 
fessoi  Owen,  that  of  the  other  bones  of  the  leg  to  which  it 
belonged,  the  tibia  must  have  been  about  two  feet  nine 
inches,  and  the  femur  about  fourteen  and  a  half  inches  long. 
The  larger  thigh  bone  refen-ed  to  must  have  belonged,  it 
was  held,  to  a  bird  that  stood  from  eleven  to  twelve  feet 
Qigh,  —  the  extreme  height  of  the  great  African  elephant. 
8uch  were  the  monster  birds  of  a   comparatively  recent 


116  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

period  ;  and  their  remains  serve  to  render  credible  the  evi- 
dence furnished  by  the  great  footprints  of  their  remote 
predecessors  of  the  Lias.     The  huge  feet  of  the  greatest 
Dinoruus  whose  bones  have  jet  been  found  would  have  lefb 
impressions  scarcely  an  inch  shorter  than  those  of  the  still 
huger  birds  of  the  Connecticut.     Is  it  not  truly  wonderful, 
that  in  this  late  age  of  the  world,  in  which  the  invention  of 
the  poets  seems  to  content  itself  with  humbler  and  lowlier 
flights  than  of  old,  we  should  thus  find  the  facts  of  geology 
fully  rivalling,  in  the  strange  and  the  outre,,  the  wildest  fan- 
cies of  the  romancers  Avho  flourished  in  the  middle  ages? 
I  have  already  referred  to  flying  dragons,  —  real  existences 
of  the  Oolitic  period,  —  that  were  quite  as  extraordinary  of 
type,  if  not  altogether  so  huge  of  bulk,  as  those  with  which 
the  Seven  Champions  of  Chi-istendom  used  to  do  battle  ; 
and  here  we  are  introduced  to  birds  of  the  Liassic  ages,  that 
were  scarce  less  gigantic  than  the  roc  of  Sinbad  the  Sailor. 
They  are  fraught  with  strange  meanings  these  footprints  of 
the  Connecticut.     They  tell  of  a  time  far  removed  into  the 
by-past  eternity-,  when  great  birds  frequented  by  mj'riads 
the  shores  of  a  nameless  lake,  to  wade  into  its  shallows  in 
quest  of  mail-covered  fishes  of  the  ancient  type,  or  long- 
extinct  molluscs  ;  while  reptiles  equally  gigantic,  and  of  still 
stranger  proportions,  haunted  the  neighboring  swamps  and 
savannas  ;  and  when  the  same  sun  that  shone  on  the  tall 
moving  forms  beside  the  waters,  and  threw  their  long  shad- 
ows across  the  red  sands,  lighted  up  the  glades  of  deep 
forests,  all  of  whose  fantastic  productions,  —  tree,  bush,  and 
herb,  —  have  even  in  their  very  species  long  since  passed 
away.     And  of  this  scene  of  things  only  the  footprints  re- 
main,—  "footprints  on  the  sands  of  time,"  that  tell  us,  among 
other  matters,  whence  the  graceful  American  poet  derived 
his  quiet  but  singularly  eflective  and  unmistakably  indige- 
nous figure :  — 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  Il7 

"  Lives  of  great  men  all  remind  us 

We  can  make  our  lives  sublime, 
And,  departing,  leave  behind  us 

Footprints  on  the  sands  of  time. 
Footprints  that  perhaps  another. 

Sailing  o'er  life's  solemn  main, 
A  forlorn  and  shipwrcfked  brother, 

Seeing,  shall  take  heart  again." 

Witli  the  Stonisfield  slates,  —  a  deposit  of  which  lies  aoo ve 
what  is  known  as  the  Inferior  Oolite,  —  the  remains  of 
mammaliferous  animals  first  appear.  As,  however,  no  other 
mammalian  remains  occur  until  after  the  close  of  the  great 
Secondary  Division,  and  as  certain  marked  peculiarities 
attach  to  these  Oolitic  ones,  it  may  be  well  to  inquire 
whether  their  place,  so  far  in  adv^ince  of  their  fellows,  may 
not  be  indicative  of  a  radical  difference  of  character,  —  a 
difference  considerable  enough  to  suggest  to  the  zoologist 
an  improvement  in  his  scheme  of  classification.  It  has  been 
shown  by  Professor  Owen,  —  our  highest  authority  in  com- 
parative anatomy, — that  while  one  Stonisfield  genus  une- 
quivocally belonged  to  the  marsupial  order,  another  of  its 

Fis.  09. 


THVLACOTHERIUM  PREVOSTI. 

{Sloniajield  Slate.) 

genera  bears  also  certain  of  the  marsupial  traits  ;  and  that 
the  group  which  they  composed,  —  a  very  small  one,  and 
consisting  exclusively  of  minute  insect-eating  animals,  —  ex- 
hibits in  its  general  aspect  the  characteristics  of  this  pouched 
family.  Even  the  genus  of  the  group  that  least  resembles 
them  was  pronounced  by  Cuviertohave  its  nearest  affinities 


118  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

with  the  opussums.     And  let  us  mark  how  very  much  may 
be  implied  in  this  ch-cumstance.     In  the  "  Animal  King- 
dom "  of  the  great  naturalist  just  named,  the  marsupiata, 
or  pouched  animals,  are  made  to  occupy  the  fourth  place 
among  the  nine  orders  of  the  Mammalia  ;  but  should  they 
not  rather  occupy  a  place  intermediate  between  the  placen- 
tal mammals  and  the  bu'ds  ?  and  does  not  nature  indicate 
their  true  position  by  the  position  which  she  assigns  to 
them  in  the  geologic  scale  ?    The  birds  ai-e  oviparous  ;  and 
between  the  extrusion  of  the  egg  and  the  development  of 
the  perfect  j'oung  bird  thej'  have  to  hatch  it  into  life  during 
a  long  period  of  incubation.     The  marsupiata  are  not  ovip- 
arous, for  their  eggs  want  the  enveloping  shell  or  skin ;  but 
they,  too,  are  extruded  in  an  exceedingly  rudimentary  and 
foetal  state,  and  have  to  undergo  in  the  pouch  a  greatly 
longer  period  of  incubation  than  that  demanded  by  nature 
for  anj'  bird  whatever.     The  young  kangaroo  is  extruded, 
after  it  has  remained  for  little  more  than  a  month  in  the 
womb,  as  a  foetus  scarcely  an  inch  in  length  by  somewhat 
less  than    half   an    inch  in  breadth :  it  is  blind,  exhibiting 
merely  dark  eye  spots  ;  its  limbs  are  so  rudimentary,  that 
even  the  hinder  legs,  so  largel}^  developed  in  the  genus 
when  mature,  exist  as  mere  stumps ;  it  is  unable  even  to 
suck,  but,  holding  permanently  on  b}''  a  minute  dug,  has  the 
sustaining  fluid  occasionall}^  pressed  into  its  mouth  by  the 
mother.     And,  undergoing  a  peculiar  but  not  the  less  real 
process  of  incubation,  the  creature  that  had  to  remain  for 
little  more  than  a  month  in  the  womb,  —  strictly  thirty -nine 
days,  —  has  to  remain  in  the  mother's  pouch,  ere  it  is  fully 
developed  and  able  to  provide  for  itself,  for  a  period  of 
eight  months.     It  is  found  to  increase  in  weight  during  this 
hatching  process,  from  somewhat  less  than  an  ounce  to 
somewhat  more  than  eight  pounds.     Noav,  this  surelj'  is  a 
process  quite  as  nearly  akin  to  the  incubation  of  egg-bear- 


HISTORY    OP    ANIMALS.  119 

ing  birds  as  to  the  ordinary  nursing  process  of  the  placental 
mammals  ;  and  on  the  occult  but  apparently  real  principle, 
that  the  true  arrangement  of  the  animal  kingdom  is  that 
which  we  find  exemplified  by  the  successive  introduction  of 
its  various  classes  and  orders  in  the  course  of  geologic 
history,  should  we  not  anticipate  a  point  of  time  for  the 
introduction  of  the  marsupiata,  intermediate  between  the 
widel3^-distant  points  at  which  the  egg-bearing  birds  and 
the  true  placental  mammals  appeared?  Ranged  at  once 
chronologically,  and  by  their  mode  of  reproduction,  the 
various  classes  of  the  vertebrata  would  run,  did  we  accept 
the  suggested  reading,  as  follows :  —  First  appear  cold- 
blooded vertebrates  (fishes),  that  propagate  by  eggs  or 
spawn,  —  chiefly  by  the  latter.  Next  appear  cold-blooded 
vertebrates  (reptiles),  that  propagate  by  eggs  or  spawn, — 
chiefly  by  the  former.  Then  appear  warm-blooded  verte- 
brates (birds),  that  propagate  by  eggs  exclusively.  Then 
warm-blooded  vertebrates  come  upon  the  stage,  that  pro- 
duce eggs  without  shells,  which  have  to  be  subjected  for 
months  to  a  species  of  extra-placental  incubation.  And 
last  of  all  the  true  placental  mammals  appear.  And  thus, 
tried  by  the  test  of  perfect  reproduction,  the  great  verte- 
bral division  receives  its  full  development  in  creation. 

The  placental  mammals  make  their  appearance,  as  I  have 
said,  in  the  earliest  ages  of  the  great  Tertiary  division,  and 
exhibit  in  the  group  an  aspect  very  unlike  that  which  they 
at  present  bear.  The  Eocene  ages  were  peculiarly  the 
ages  of  the  Palseotheres,  — strange  animals  of  that  pach}^- 
dermatous  or  thick-skinned  order  to  which  the  elephants, 
the  tapirs,  the  bogs,  and  the  horses  belong.  It  had  been 
remarked  by  naturalists,  that  there  are  fewer  families  of 
this  order  in  living  nature  than  of  almost  any  other,  and 
that,  of  the  existing  genera,  not  a  few  were  widely  separated 
in  their  analogies  from  the  others.     But  in  the  Palaeotheres 


120  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

of  the  Eocene,  "which  ranged  in  size  from  a  large  horse  to  a 
hare,  not  a  few  of  the  missing  links  have  been  found,  — 
links  connecting  the  tapirs  to  the  hogs,  and  the  hogs  to  the 
Palaeotheres  proper  ;  and  there  is  at  least  one  species  sug- 

Fig.  70. 


ANOPLOTHERinM  COMMUNF 

(,£ocene.) 

gestive  of  an  union  of  some  of  the  more  peculiar  trait*,  ot 
the  tapirs  and  the  horses.  It  "was  among  these  extincl 
Pachj'dermata  of  the  Paris  basin  that  Cuvier  effected  hi& 
•n-onderful  restorations,  and  produced  those  figures  in  out- 
line "nhich  are  now  as  familiar  to  the  geologist  as  an}'  of 
the  forms  of  the  existing  animals.  The  London  Clay  and 
the  Eocene  of  the  Isle  of  Wight  have  also  yielded  numer- 
ous specimens  of  those  pachyderms,  "whose  identity  "v\ith 
the  Continental  ones  has  been  established  by  Owen ;  but 
they  are  more  fragmentary,  and  their  state  of  keeping 
less  perfect,  than  those  furnished  by  the  gypsum  quarries  of 
Velay  and  Montmartre.  In  these  the  smaller  animals  occur 
often  in  a  state  of  preservation  so  peculiar  and  partial  as  to 
excite  the  curiosity  of  even  the  untaught  "workmen.  Only 
half  the  skeleton  is  present.  The  limbs  and  ribs  of  the  under 
side  are  found  l3'ing  in  nearly  their  proper  places  ;  "while  of 
the  limbs  and  ribs  of  the  upper  side  usually  not  a  trace  can 
be  detected,  —  even  the  upper  side  of  the  skull  is  often 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS. 


121 


awanting 


It  would  almost  seem  as  if  some  pre-Adamite 
butcher  had  divided  the  carcasses  longitudinallj^  and  carried 
away  with  him  all  the  upper  halves.  The  reading  of  the 
enigma  seems  to  be,  that  when  the  creatures  lay  down  and 


Fig.  71. 


a 


ANIMALS  OF  THE  PARIS  BASIN.* 

{Eocene.) 

died,  the  gypsum  in  which  theu*  remains  occur  was  soft 
enough  to  permit  their  under  sides  to  sink  into  it,  and  that 
then  graduall}^  hardening,  it  kept  the  bones  in  their  places  ; 
while  the  uncovered  upper  sides,  exposed  to  the  disinte- 
grating influences,  either  mouldered  away  piecemeal,  or 
were  removed  by  accident.  The  bones  of  the  larger  ani- 
mals of  the  basin  are  usually  found  detached ;  and  ere  they 
could  be  reconstructed  into  perfect  skeletons,  they  taxed 
the  extraordinary  powers  of  the  greatest  of  comparative 
anatomists.     Rather  more  than  twenty  different  species  of 


*  a,  Palaeothcrium  magnum.     6,  Palaeotherium  minus, 
therium  commune. 
11 


c,  Anoplo 


122 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


extinct  mammals  have  been  detected  in  the  Paris  basin, — 
not  a  great  number,  it  may  be  thought ;  and  yet  for  so 
limited  a  locality  we  may  deem  it  not  a  very  small  one, 
when  we  take  into  account  the  fact  that  all  our  native 
mammals  of  Britain  and  Ireland  amount  (according  to 
Fleming) ,  if  we  accept  the  Cetaceaj  and  the  seals,  to  but 
forty  species. 

In  the  Middle  or  Miocene  Tertiary,  pachyderms,  "-hough 
of  a  wholly  different  type  from  their  predecessors,  are  still 
the  prevailing  forms.  The  Dinotherium,  one  of  the  greatest 
quadrupedal  mammals  that  ever  lived,  seems  to  have  formed 
a  connecting  link  in  this  middle  age  between  the  Pachyder. 
mata  and  the  Cetacoa;.  Each  ramus  of  the  under  jaw, 
which  in  the  larger  specimens  are  fully  four  feet  in  length, 
bore  at  the  symphysis  a  great  bent  tusk  turned  downwards, 
which  appears  to  have  been  employed  as  a  pickaxe  in  uproot- 
ing the  aquatic  plants  and  liliaceous  roots  on  which  the  crea- 
ture seems  to  have  lived.     The  head,  which  measured  about 

Fig.  72. 


DINOTHERIUM    GIGANTEUM. 

{Miocene.) 


three  feet  across,  —  a  breadth,  sufficient,  surely,  to  satisfy  the 
demands  of  the  most  exacting  phrenologist,  —  was  provided 
with  muscles  of  enormous  strength,  arranged  so  as  to  give 
potent  effect  to  the  operations  of  this  strange  tool.    The 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  123 

hinder  part  of  the  slvull  not  a  little  resembled  that  of  the 
Cetaeeae  ;  while,  from  the  form  of  the  nasal  bones,  the  crea- 
ture Tvas  evidentl}'-  furnished  with  a  trunk  like  (he  elephant. 
It  seems  not  improbable,  therefore,  that  this  bulkiest  of 
mammaliferous  quadrupeds  constituted,  as  I  have  said,  a 
sort  of  uniting  tie  between  creatures  still  associated  in  the 
human  mind,  from  the  circumstance  of  their  massive  propor- 
tions, as  the  greatest  that  swim  the  sea  or  walk  the  land,  — 
the  whale  and  the  elephant.  The  Mastodon,  an  elephantoid 
animal,  also  furnished,  like  the  elephant,  with  tusks  and 
trunlc,  but  marked  by  certain  peculiarities  which  constitute 
it  a  different  genus,  seems  in  Europe  to  have  been  contem- 
porar}'-  with  the  Dinotherium  ;  but  in  North  America  (the 
scene  of  its  greatest  numerical  development)  it  appears  to 
belong  to  a  later  age.  In  height  it  did  not  surpass  the 
African  elephant,  but  it  considerably  exceeded  it  in  length, 
—  a  specimen  which  could  not  have  stood  above  twelve  feet 
high  indicating  a  length  of  about  twenty-five  feet :  it  had 
what  the  elephants  want, — tusks  fixed  in  its  lower  jaw, 
which  the  males  retained  through  life,  but  the  females  lost 
when  young;  its  limbs  were  proportionally  shorter,  but 
more  massive,  and  its  abdomen  more  elongated  and  slim ; 
its  grinder  teeth  too,  some  of  which  have  been  known  to 
weigh  from  seventeen  to  twenty  pounds,  and  their  cusps 
elevated  into  great  mammfe-like  protuberances,  to  which  the 
creature  owes  its  name,  and  wholly  difier  in  their  propor- 
tions and  outline  from  the  grinders  of  the  elephant.  The 
much  greater  remoteness  of  the  mastodonic  period  in  Europe 
than  in  America  is  a  circumstance  worthj^  of  notice,  as  it  is 
one  of  many  facts  that  seem  to  indicate  a  general  transpo- 
sition of  at  least  the  later  geologic  ages  on  the  opposite  sides 
of  the  Atlantic.  Groups  of  corresponding  character  on  the 
eastern  and  western  shores  of  this  great  ocean  were  not  con- 
temporaneous in  time.     It  has  been  repeatedly  remarked, 


124  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

that  the  existing  plants  and  trees  of  the  United  States,  with 
not  a  few  of  its  fishes  and  reptiles,  bear  in  their  forms  and 
construction  the  marks  of  a  much  greater  antiquity  than 
those  of  Europe.  The  geologist  who  sets  himself  to  discover 
similar  tj-pes  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  Atlantic  would  have 
to  seek  for  them  among  the  deposits  of  the  later  Tertiaries. 
North  America  seems  to  be  still  passing  through  its  later 
Tertiary  ages  ;  and  it  appears  to  be  a  consequence  of  this 
curious  transposition,  that  while  in  Eui-ope  the  mastodonic 
period  is  removed  by  two  great  geologic  eras  from  the 
present  time,  it  is  removed  from  it  in  America  by  only 
one.  Even  in  America,  however,  that  period  lies  far  bej'ond 
the  reach  of  human  tradition, — a  fact  borne  out  by  the 
pseudo-traditions  retailed  by  the  aborigines  regarding  the 
mastodon.  By  none  of  at  least  the  higher  naturalists  has 
there  been  a  doubt  entertained  respecting  its  herbivorous 
character  ;  and  the  discover}-  of  late  years  of  the  stomach 
of  an  individual  charged  with  deca3-ed  herbage  and  frag- 
ments of  the  succulent  branches  of  trees,  some  of  them  of 
existing  species,  has  demonstrated  the  solidity  of  the  rea- 
sonings founded  on  its  general  structure  and  aspect.  The 
pseudo-traditions,  however,  represent  it  in  ever}^  instance  as 
a  carnivorous  t3Tant,  that,  had  it  not  been  itself  destroyed, 
would  have  destroyed  all  the  other  animals  its  contempora- 
ries. It  is  said  b}"^  the  red  men  of  Virginia,  "  that  a  troop 
of  these  tremendous  quadrupeds  m.ade  fearful  havoc  for 
some  time  among  the  deer,  the' buffaloes,  and  all  the  other 
animals  created  for  the  use  of  the  Indians,  and  spread  deso- 
lation far  and  wide.  At  last  •  the  Mighty  Man  above '  seized 
his  thunder  and  killed  them  all,  with  the  exception  of  the 
largest  of  the  males,  who  presenting  his  head  to  the  thun- 
derbolts, shook  them  off  as  they  fell ;  but,  being  wounded 
in  the  side,  he  betook  himself  to  flight  towards  the  great 
lakes,  where  he  still  resides  at  the  present  day." 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALb.  125 

Let  me  here  remind  3-00  in  the  passing,  that  that  anti- 
quity of  type  Avhich  characterizes  the  recent  productions  of 
North  America  is  one  of  many  wonders,  —  not  absolutely 
geological  in  themselves,  but  which,  save  for  the  revelations 
of  geology,  would  have  forever  remained  unnoted  and  un- 
known, —  which  have  been  pressed,  during  the  last  half  cen- 
tury, on  the  notice  of  naturalists.  "  It  is  a  circumstance 
quite  extraordinary  and  unexpected,"  says  Agassiz  in  his 
profoundly  interesting  work  on  Lake  Superior,  "  that  the 
fossil  plants  of  the  Tertiary  beds  of  Oeningen  resemble 
more  closely  the  trees  and  shrubs  which  grow  at  present  in 
the  eastern  parts  of  North  America,  than  those  of  any  other 
parts  of  the  world  ;  thus  allowing  us  to  express  correctly 
the  difference  between  the  opposite  coasts  of  Europe  and 
America,  by  saying  that  the  present  eastern  American  flora, 
and,  I  may  add,  the  fauna  also,  have  a  more  ancient  charac- 
ter than  those  of  Europe.  The  plants,  especially  the  trees 
and  shrubs,  growing  in  our  days  in  the  United  States,  are, 
as  it  were,  old-fashioned;  and  the  characteristic  genera 
Lagomys,  Chelydra,  and  the  large  Salamanders  with  per- 
manent gills,  that  remind  us  of  the  fossils  of  Oeningen,  are 
at  least  equally  so  ;  —  they  bear  the  marks  of  former  ages." 
How  strange  a  fact !  Not  only  are  we  accustomed  to  speak 
of  the  eastern  continents  as  the  Old  World,  in  contradistinc- 
tion to  the  great  continent  of  the  west,  but  to  speak  also 
of  the  world  before  the  Flood  as  the  Old  World,  in  contra- 
distinction to  the  post-diluvian  world  which  succeeded  it. 
And  yet  equally,  if  we  receive  the  term  in  either  of  its  ac- 
ceptations, is  America  an  older  world  still,  —  an  older  world 
than  that  of  the  eastern  continents,  —  an  older  world,  in  the 
fashion  and  type  of  its  productions,  than  the  world  before 
the  Flood.  And  when  the  immigrant  settler  takes  axe  amid 
the  deep  backwoods,  to  laj^  open  for  the  first  time  what  he 

deems  a  new  countr}',  the  great  trees  that  fall  before  him,  — 
11* 


126  THE    PAL^ONTOLOOICAL 

the  brushwood  that  he  lops  away  with  a  sweep  of  his  tool,— 
the  unfaroiliar  herbs  which  he  tramples  under  foot,  —  the 
lazy  fish-like  reptile  that  scarce  stirs  out  of  his  path  as  he 
descends  to  the  neighboring  creek  to  drink,  —  the  fierce 
alligator-like  tortoise,  with  the  large  limbs  and  small  carpace 
that  he  sees  watching  among  the  reeds  for  fish  and  frogs, 
just  as  he  reaches  the  water,  —  and  the  little  hare-like 
rodent,  without  a  tail,  that  he  startles  by  the  way,  —  all  at- 
test, by  the  antiquencss  of  the  mould  in  which  they  are  cast, 
how  old  a  country  the  seemingly  new  one  really  is, — a 
country  vastly  older,  in  type  at  least,  than  that  of  the  ante- 
diluvians and  the  patriarchs,  and  only  to  be  compared  with 
that  which  flourished  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  Atlantic 
long  ere  the  appearance  of  man,  and  the  remains  of  whose 
perished  productions  we  find  locked  up  in  the  loess  of  the 
Rhine,  or  amid  the  lignites  of  Nassau.  America  is  era- 
phatically  the  Old  World.  If  we  accept,  however,  as  sound 
the  ingenious  logic  by  which  Colton  labors  to  show,  in  not 
inelegant  verse,  that  the  Moderns  are  the  true  Ancients^  we 
may  continue  to  term  it  the  New  World  still. 

*'  We  tliat  on  these  late  days  are  thrown 
Must  be  the  oldest  Ancients  known ; 
The  earliest  Modern  earth  hatli  seen 
Was  Adam  in  his  apron  green. 
He  lived  Avhen  young  Creation  pealed 
Her  morning  hymn  o'er  flood  and  field, 
Till«iU  her  infant  offspring  came 
To  that  great  christening  for  a  name. 
And  he  that  would  the  Ancients  know, 
Must  forward  come,  not  backward  go : 
The  learned  number  of  the  shelves 
Shows  nothing  older  tiian  ourselves. 
But  who  in  older  times  than  we 
Shall  live  ?  —  That  infant  on  the  knee,  — 
See  sights  to  us  were  never  shown, 
And  secrets  known  to  us  unknown." 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS. 


127 


The  group  of  mammals  which,  in  Europe,  at  least,  imme- 
diately preceded  the   human   period   seems  to  have  been 


Fig.  73. 


ELEPHAS  PRIMICENIDS. 

{Mammoth.      Great  British  Elephant, 


everywhere  a  remarkable  one  ;  and  nowhere  was  it  more  so 


128 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


than  in  the  British  islands.  Our  present  mammaliferous 
fauna  is  rather  poor  ;  but  the  contents  of  the  later  deposits 
show  that  we  must  regard  it  as  but  a  mere  fragment  of  a 
very  noble  one.  Associated  with  species  that  still  exist  in 
the  less  cultivated  parts  of  the  country,  such  as  the  badger, 

Fig.  74. 


TKOGONTHEHIUM  CUVTEEI. 

Gigantic  Beaver.    {Pleistocene.) 

the  fox,  the  wild  cat,  the  roe  and  the  red  deer,  we  find  the 
remains  of  great  animals,  whose  congeners  must  now  be 
sought  for  in  the  intertropical  regions.  Britain,  during  the 
times  of  the  boulder  clay,  and  for  ages  previous,  had  its 

Fig.  75. 


CRSCS  SPEL.EIIS. 

Cave  Bear.    (Pleistocene.) 


native  elephant,  its  two  species  of  rhinoceros,  its  hippopot- 
amus, its  hyaena,  its  tiger,  its  three  species  of  bears,  its  two 


HISTORY    OF     ANIMALS.  129 

species  of  beavers,  its  great  elk,  and  its  gigantic  deer.  Forms 
now  found  widely  apart,  and  in  very  different  climates,  meet 
within  the  British  area.  During  at  least  the  earlier  times  of 
the  group,  the  temperature  of  our  island  seems  to  have  been 
very  much  what  it  is  now.  As  I  have  already  had  occasion 
to  remark,  the  British  oak  flourished  on  its  plains  and  lower 
slopes,  and  the  birch  and  Scotch  fii's  on  its  hills.  And  yet 
under  these  familiar  trees  the  lagom3's  or  tailless  hare,  a 
form  now  mainlv  restricted  to  Siberia  and  the  wilds  of  Nor- 
thern  America,  and  the  reindeer,  an  animal  whose  proper 
habitat  at  the  present  time  is  Lapland,  were  associated  with 
forms  that  are  now  only  to  be  found  between  the  tropics, 
such  as  that  of  the  hippopotamus  and  rhinoceros.  These  last, 
however,  unequivocally  of  extinct  species,  seem  to  have  been 
adapted  to  live  in  a  temperate  climate  ;  and  we  know  from 
the  famous  Siberian  specimen,  that  the  British  elephant, 
with  its  covering  of  long  hair  and  closely-felted  wool, 
was  fitted  to  sustain  the  rigors  of  a  very  severe  one.  It 
is  surely  a  strange  fact,  but  not  less  true  than  strange, 

Fig.  76 


nYENA   SPEL^A. 

C.'ive  Hyasna.     (^Pleistocene.) 


that  since  hill  and  dale  assumed  in  Britain  their  present  con- 
figuration, and  the  oak  and  birch  flourished  in  its  woods. 


130  THE    PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 

there  were  caves  in  England  haunted  for  ages  by  families  of 
hyjenas,  —  that  they  dragged  into  their  dens  with  the  car- 
casses of  long  extinct  animals  those  of  the  still  familiar  deni- 
zens of  our  hill-sides,  and  feasted,  now  on  the  lagomys,  and 
now  on  the  common  hare,  —  that  they  now  fastened  on  the 
beaver  or  the  reindeer,  and  now  upon  the  roebuck  or  the 
goat.  In  one  of  these  caves,  such  of  the  bones  as  projected 
from  the  stiff  soil  have  been  actually  worn  smooth  in  a  nar- 
row passage  where  the  hj^aenas  used  to  come  in  contact  with 
them  in  passing  out  and  in ;  and  for  several  feet  in  depth  the 
floor  beneath  is  composed  almost  exclusively  of  gnawed 
fragments,  that  still  exhibit  the  deeply  indented  marks  of 
formidable  teeth.  In  the  famous  Kirkdale  cave  alone,  parts 
of  the  skeletons  of  from  two  to  three  hundred  hysenas  have 
been  detected,  mixed  with  portions  of  the  osseous  frame- 
work of  the  cave-tiger,  the  cave-bear,  the  ox,  the  deer,  the 
mammoth,  and  the  rhinoceros.  That  cave  must  have  been 
a  den  of  wild  creatures  for  many  ages  ere  the  times  of  the 
boulder  claj*,  during  which  period  it  was  shut  up  from  all 
access  to  the  light  and  air  hj  a  drift  deposit,  andlay  covered 
over  until  again  laid  open  by  some  workmen  little  more 
than  thirty  years  ago.  Not  onl}^  were  many  of  the  wild 
animals  of  the  country  which  still  exist  contemporary  for  a 
time  with  its  extinct  bears,  tigers,  and  elephants,  but  it 
seems  at  least  highly  probable  that  several  of  our  domes- 
ticated breeds  derived  their  origin  from  progenitors  whose 
]*emains  we  find  entombed  in  the  bone-caves  and  other 
deposits  of  the  same  age ;  though  of  course  the  changes 
effected  by  domestication  in  almost  all  the  tame  animals 
renders  the  question  of  their  identity  with  the  indigenous 
breeds  somewhat  obscure.  Cuvier  was,  however,  unable 
to  detect  any  difference  between  the  skeleton  of  a  fossil 
horse  contemporary  with  the  elephant  and  that  of  our 
domestic  breed ;  a  fossil  goat  of  the  same  age  cannot  be 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS,  131 

distinguished  from  the  domesticated  animal ;  and  one  of 
our  two  fossil  oxen  {Bos  longifrons)  does  not  differ  more 
from  some  of  the  existing  breeds  than  these  have,  in  the 
course  of  time,  been  made,  chiefly  by  artificial  means,  to 
differ  among  themselves.  But  of  one  of  our  domestic  tribes 
no  trace  has  yet  been  found  in  the  rocks  :  like  the  cod  family 
among  fishes,  or  the  Rosaceje  among  plants,  it  seems  to  have 
preceded  man  by  but  a  ver^^  brief  period.  And  certainh', 
if  created  specially  for  his  use,  though  the  pride  of  the 
herald  might  prevent  him  from  selecting  it  as  in  aught  typi- 
cal of  the  human  race,  it  would  yet  not  be  easy  to  instance 
a  family  of  animals  that  has  ministered  more  extensivcl}"  to 
his  necessities.  I  refer  to  the  sheep,  —  that  soft  and  harm- 
less crcatTire,  that  clothes  civilized  man  evcrj^where  in  the 
colder  latitudes  with  its  fleece,  —  that  feeds  him  with  its 
flesh,  —  that  gives  its  bowels  to  be  spun  into  the  catgut  with 
which  he  refits  his  musical  instruments, — whose  horns  he 
has  learned  to  fashion  into  a  thousand  useful  trinkets,  —  and 
whose  skin,  converted  into  parchment,  served  to  convey  to 
later  times  the  thinking  of  the  first  full  blow  of  the  human 
intellect  across  the  drear}-  gulf  of  the  middle  ages. 

At  length  the  human  period  begins.  A  creature  appears 
upon  the  scene  unlike  all  that  had  preceded  him,  and  whose 
nature  it  equally  is  to  look  back  upon  the  events  of  the 
past,  —  among  other  matters,  on  that  succession  of  beings 
upon  the  planet  which  he  inhabits,  with  which  we  are  this 
evening  attempting  to  deal,  —  and  to  anticipate  at  least  one 
succession  more,  in  that  still  future  state  in  which  he  him- 
self is  again  to  appear,  in  happier  circumstances  than  now, 
and  in  a  worthier  character.  "We  possess  another  history 
of  the  primeval  age  and  subsequent  chronology  of  the 
human  famil}'-  than  that  which  we  find  inscribed  in  the 
rocks.  And  it  is  well  that  we  do  so.  From  various  causes, 
the  geologic  evidence  regarding  the  period  of  man's  first 


l32  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

appearance  on  earth  is  singularly  obscure.  That  custom  of 
••'burying  his  dead  out  of  his  sight,"  which  obtained,  wo 
know,  in  the  patriarchal  times,  and  was  probablj^  in  use 
ever  since  man  came  first  under  the  law  of  death,  has  had 
the  effect  of  mingling  his  remains  with  those  of  creatures 
that  were  extinct  for  ages  ere  he  began  to  be.  The  cavern, 
once  a  haunt  of  carnivorous  animals,  that  in  the  first  simple 
ges  of  his  history  had  furnished  him  with  a  shelter  when 
living,  became  his  burying-place  when  dead  ;  and  thus  his 
bones,  and  his  first  rude  attempts  in  pottery  and  weapon- 
making,  have  been  found  associated  with  the  remains  of 
the  cave-hjsena  and  cave-tiger,  with  the  teeth  of  the 
ancient  hippopotamus,  and  the  tusks  of  the  primeval  ele- 
phant. The  evidence  on  the  point,  too,  —  from  the  great 
paucity  of  human  remains  of  a  comparatively  remote 
period,  and  from  the  circumstance  that  they  are  rarely  seen 
by  geologists  in  the  stratum  in  which  they  occur,  —  is  usu- 
ally very  imperfect  in  its  details.  Further,  it  is  an  evidence 
obnoxious  to  suspicion,  from  the  fact  that  a  keen  contro 
versy  has  arisen  on  the  subject  of  man's  antiquity,  that  such 
fragments  of  man  himself  or  of  his  works  as  manifest  great 
age  have  been  pressed  to  serve  as  weapons  in  the  fray,  — 
that,  occurring  always  in  superficial  and  local  deposits,  their 
true  era  may  be  greatl}-  antedated,  under  the  influence  of 
prejudice,  by  men  who  have  no  design  wilfully  to  deceive, 
—  and  that  while,  respecting  the  older  formations,  with 
their  abundant  organisms,  the  conclusions  of  any  one  geol- 
ogist may  be  tested  by  all  the  others,  the  geologist  who 
once  in  a  lifetime  picks  up  in  a  stratified  sand  or  clay  a 
stone  arrow-head  or  a  human  bone,  finds  that  the  data  on 
which  he  founds  his  conclusions  may  be  received  or  rejected 
by  his  contemporaries,  but  not  re-examined.  It  may  be 
safely  stated,  however,  that  that  ancient  record  in  whic!i 
man  is  represented  as  the  lastborn  of  creation,  is  oppose  J 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  133 

by  no  geologic  fact ;  and  that  if,  according  to  Chalmers, 
"  the  Mosaic  writings  do  not  fix  the  antiquit}'  of  the  globe," 
they  at  least  do  fix  —  making  allowance,  of  course,  for  the 
varying  estimates  of  the  chronologcr — "the  antiquity  of 
the  human  species."  The  great  column  of  being,  with  its 
base  set  in  the  sea,  and  inscribed,  like  some  old  triumphal 
pillar,  with  many  a  strange  form,  —  at  once  hieroglyphic 
and  figure,  —  bears,  as  the  ornately  sculptured  capital, 
which  imparts  beauty  and  finish  to  the  whole,  reasoning, 
responsible  man.  There  is  surely  a  very  wonderful  har- 
mony manifested  in  the  proportions  of  that  nice  sequence 
in  which  the  invertebrates  —  the  fishes,  the  reptiles,  the 
birds,  the  marsupials,  the  placental  mammals,  and,  last  of 
all,  man  himself —  are  so  exquisite^  arranged.  It  reminds 
us  of  the  fine  figure  employed  by  Dryden  in  his  first  Ode 
for  St.  Cecilia's  Day,  —  a  figure  which,  viewed  in  the  light 
cast  on  it  by  the  modern  science  of  Palaeontology,  stands 
out  in  bolder  relief  than  that  in  which  it  could  have  ap- 
peared to  the  poet  himself :  — 

"From  harmony,  from  heavenly  harmony, 
This  universal  frame  began ; 
From  harmony  to  harmony, 
Through  all  the  compass  of  the  notes  it  ran, 
The  diapason  closing  full  in  man." 

In  the  limits  to  which  I  have  restricted  mj^self,  I  have 

been  able  to  do  little  more  than  simply  to  chronicle  the 

successive  eras  in  which  the  various  classes  and  divisions  of 

the  organic  kingdom,  vegetable  and  animal,  make   their 

appearance  in  creation.     I  have  produced  merely  a  brief 

record  of  the  various  births,  in  their  order,  of  that  great 

family  whose  father  is  God.     And  in  pursuing  such  a  plan, 

much,  of  necessity,   must   have  been   omitted.     I   ought 

perhaps  to  have  told  j'ou,  that  verj'^  rarcl^^,  if  ever,  do  the 

master  forms  of  a  period  constitute  the  prevailing  or  typical 
12 


134 


THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 


organisms  of  its  deposits.     Of  the  three  great  divisions  of 
which  the  geologic  scale  consists,  —  Palaeozoic,  Secondary, 


Fig.  77. 


Fig.  78. 


Fig.  79. 


A8APHD8  CADDATUS. 


(Silurian.) 


OUTHOC'F.RAS 
LATERALE. 

{Mountain  Limestone.) 


8PRIGERINA  RETICULABIS. 


{Old  Red  Sandstone.) 


and  Tertiary, — the   first,   or  ichthj'ic  period,  is  marked 
chiefly,  not  by  its  great  fishes,  but  by  the  peculiar  character 


Fig.  80. 


Fig.  81. 


Fig.  82. 


Fig.  83. 


A.  MARGARITATUS. 

{Lias. ) 


A.  BISOLCATUS. 

{Lias.) 


BELEMNITELLA    BELEMNITEa 
MUCRONATA.  SULOATUS, 

{Chalk.)  {Oolite.) 


of  its  brachipodous  and  cephalopodous  mollusca,  and  in  its 
earlier  stages  by  its  thrce-lobcd  crustacese  ;  the  second  or 


HISTORY     OF     ANIMALS.  ]35 

reptilian  period  was  emphatically  the  period  of  the  ammo- 
nite and  belemnite  ;  while  the  third  and  last,  or  mammalian 
period,  was  that  of  gastropodous  and  conchiferons  molluscs, 
impressed,  generically  at  least,  by  all  the  features  of  the 

Fig.  84.  Fig.  85. 


BTOREX  ALVEOLATU8.  ASTARTE  OMALII. 

(Red  Crag.) 

i^oup  which  still  exists  in  our  seas.  Save  in  a  few  local 
deposits,  fishes  do  not  form  the  prevailing  organisms  in  the 
formations  of  the  age  of  fishes  ;  nor  reptiles  in  the  forma- 
tions of  the  age  of  reptiles  ;  nor  yet  mammals  in  the  for- 
mations of  the  age  of  mammals.  Naj',  it  is  not  improbable 
that  the  recent  or  human  period  may  be  marked  most 
prominently  in  the  future,  when  it  comes  to  exist  simply  as 
a  geologic  system,  by  a  still  humbler  organism  than  most 
of  these  molluscs.  On  almost  all  rocky  shores  a  line  of 
pale  gray  may  be  seen  at  low  water,  running  for  mile  after 
mile  along  the  belt  that  has  been  laid  bare  at  the  basis  of 
the  cliffs  by  the  fall  of  the  tide.  It  owes  its  pale  color 
to  millions  of  millions  of  a  small  balauus  {B.  balanoides)^ 
produced  in  such  amazing  abundance  in  the  littoral  zone  as 
to  cover  with  a  rough  crust  every  minute  portion  of  rock 
and  ever}'  sedentary  shell.  Other  species  of  the  same 
genus  {B.  crenatus  and  B.  porcatus)  occupy  the  depths  of 
the  sea  beyond ;  and  their  remains,  washed  ashore  by  the 
waves,  and  mingled  with  those  of  the  littoral  species,  form 


136  THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL 

often  great  accumulations  of  shell  sand.  I  have  seen 
among  the  Hebrides  a  shell  sand  accumulated  along  the 
beach  to  the  depth  of  many  feet,  of  which  fully  two  thirds 
was  composed  o^  the  valves  and  compartments  of  balanidffi ; 
and  a  similar  sand  on  the  east  coast  of  Scotland,  a  little  to 
the  south  of  St.  Andrews,  formed  in  still  larger  proportions 
of  the  fragments  of  a  single  species,  —  Ba- 
'^"  ^^  lanus  crenatus.     Now,  this  genus,  so  amaz- 

ingly abundant  at  the  present  time  in  every 
existing  sea,  and  whose  accumulated  remains 
bid  fair  to  exist  as  great  limestone  rocks  in 
the  future,  had  no  existence  in  the  Palaeozoic 

BALANUS    CKASSUS.  o  J  Ti.    /•        i  •         a1 

or  Secondary  ages.  It  lu-st  appears  in  the 
times  of  the  earlier  Tertiarj',  in,  however, 
onlj^  a  single  species  ;  and,  becoming  gradually  of  more  and 
more  importance  as  a  group,  it  receives  its  fullest  numerical 
development  in  the  present  time.  And  thus  the  remains  of 
a  sub-class  of  animals,  low  in  theii'  standing  among  the 
articulata,  ma}'  form  one  of  the  most  prominent  Palaionto- 
logical  features  of  the  human  period.  But  enough  for  the 
present  of  circumstance  and  detail. 

Such,  so  far  as  the  geologist  has  yet  been  able  to  read 
the  records  of  his  science,  has  been  the  course  of  creation, 
from  the  first  beginnings  of  vitalit}'  upon  our  planet,  until 
the  appearance  of  man.  And  very  wonderful,  surely,  has 
that  course  been  !  How  strange  a  procession  !  Never  yet 
on  Egyptian  obelisk  or  Assyrian  frieze,  —  \f  here  long  lines 
of  figures  seem  stalking  across  the  granite,  each  charged 
with  symbol  and  mj'stery,  —  have  our  Layards  or  Rawlin- 
sons  seen  aught  so  extraordinary  as  that  long  procession  of 
being  which,  starting  out  of  the  blank  depths  of  the  by- 
gone eternit}',  is  still  defiling  across  the  stage,  and  of 
which  we  ourselves  form  some  of  the  passing  figures. 
Who  shall  declare  the  profound  meanings  with  which  these 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  137 

geologic  hieroglyphics  are  charged,  or  indicate  the  ultimate 
goal  at  which  the  long  procession  is  destined  to  arrive  ? 

The  readings  already  given,  the  conclusions  already  de- 
duced, are  as  various  as  the  hopes  and  fears,  the  habits  of 
thought,  and  the  cast  of  intellect,  of  the  several  interpre- 
ters who  have  set  themselves,  —  some,  alas  !  with  but  little 
preparation  and  very  imperfect  knowledge,  — to  declare  in 
their  order  the  details  of  this  marvellous,  dream-like  vision, 
and,  with  the  di'eam,  "  the  interpretation  thereof."     One 
class  of  interpreters  may  well  remind  us  of  the  dim-eyed 
old  man, — the  genius  of  unbelief  so  poetically  described 
by  Coleridge,  —  who,  sitting  in  his  cold  and  dreary  cave, 
"  talked  much  and  vehemently  concerning  an  infinite  series 
of  causes  and  effects,  which  he  explained  to  be  a  string  of 
blind  men,  the  last  of  whom  caught  hold  of  the  skirt  of 
the  one  before  him,  he  of  the  next,  and  so  on,  till  they 
were  all  out  of  sight,  and  that  they  all  walked  infallibly 
straight,  without  making  one  false  step,  though  all  wore 
alike  blind."    With  these  must  I  class  those  assertors  of 
the  development  hypothesis  who  can  see  in  the  upward 
progress  of  being  only  the  operation  of  an  incoraprehend- 
ing  and  incomprehensible  law,  through  which,  in  the  course 
of  unreckoned  ages,  the  lower  tribes  and  families   have 
nsen  into  the  higher,  and  inferior  into  superior  natures,  and 
in  virtue  of  which,  in  short,  the  animal  creation  has  grown, 
in  at  least  its  nobler  specimens,  altogether  unwittingl3', 
without  thought  or  care  on  its  own  part,  and  without  intel- 
ligence on  the  part  of  the  operating  law,  from  irrational  to 
rational,  and  risen  in  the  scale  from  the  mere  promptings 
of  instinct  to  the  highest  exercise  of  reason,  —  from  apes 
and  baboons  to  Bacons  and  Newtons,     The  blind  lead  the 
blind ;  —  the   unseeing  law  operates  on  the  unperceiving 
creatures ;  and  they  go,  not  together  into  the  ditch,  but 
12* 


138  THE    PALiEONTOLOGICAL 

direct  onwards,  straight  as  an  arrow,  and  higher  and  hioher 
at  every  step. 

Another  class  look  with  profound  melancholy  on  that 
great  city  of  the  dead,  —  the  burial-place  of  all  that  ever 
lived  in  the  past,  — which  occupies  with  its  ever-extendino- 
pavements  of  gravestones,  and  its  ever-lengthening  streets 
of  tombs  and  sepulchres,  every  region  opened  up  by  the 
geologist.  They  see  the  onward  procession  of  being  as  if 
but  tipped  with  life,  and  nought  but  inanimate  carcasses  all 
'N.  behind,  —  dead  individuals,  dead  species,  dead  genera,  dead 
^^^/^reations,  —  a  universe  of  death ;  and  ask  whether  the 
^y^  same  annihilation  which  overtook  in  turn  all  the  races  of  all 
the  past,  shall  not  one  day  overtake  our  own  race  also,  and 
a  time  come  when  men  and  their  works  shall  have  no  exist- 
ence save  as  stone-pervaded  fossils  locked  up  in  the  rock 
forever?  Nowhere  do  we  find  the  doubts  and  fears  of  this 
class  more  admirably  portrayed  than  in  the  works  of  per- 
haps the  most  thoughtful  and  suggestive  of  living  poets : 

"  Are  God  and  Nature  then  at  strife, 

That  Nature  lends  snch  evil  dreams. 
So  careful  of  Ihc  type  she  seems, 

So  careless  of  the  single  life? 

'  So  careful  of  the  type ! '  hut  no, 

From  scarped  cliff  and  quarried  stone. 
She  cries,  '  A  thousand  types  are  gone ; 

I  care  for  nothing ;  all  shall  go  : 

Thou  makest  thine  appeal  to  me ; 
1  bring  to  life,  I  hring  to  death ; 
The  spirit  Joes  but  mean  the  breath. 

I  know  no  more.'     And  he,  —  shall  he, 

Man.  her  last  work,  who  seemed  so  fair, 
Such  splendid  pnrpose  in  his  eyes. 
Who  rolled  the  psalm  to  wintry  skies 

And  built  him  fanes  of  fruitless  prayer, 

Who  trusted  God  was  lore  indeed, 
And  love  creation's  final  law, 
Though  Nature,  red  in  tooth  and  claw, 


HISTORY    OF    ANIMALS.  I39 

With  ravine  shrieked  against  his  creed,  — 
Who  loved,  who  suffered  countless  ills, 

Who  battled  for  the  true,  the  just,  — 

Be  blown  about  the  desert  dust, 
Or  sealed  within  the  iron  hills? 
No  more  !  —  a  monster  then,  a  dream, 

A  discord.     Dragons  of  the  prime. 

That  tore  each  other  in  tlieir  slime. 
Where  mellow  music  matched  with  him. 
O,  life,  as  futile  then  as  frail,  — 

O  for  thy  voice  to  soothe  and  bless  i 

What  hope  of  answer  or  redress. 
Behind  the  vale,  behind  the  vale ! " 

The  sagficity  of  the  poet  here,  —  that  strange  sagacity 
^^fhich  seems  so  nearly  akin  to  the  prophetic  spirit,  —  su"-- 
gests  in  this  noble  passage  the  true  reading  of  the  enigma. 
The  appearance  of  man  upon  the  scene  of  being  constitutes 
a  new  era  in  creation ;  the  operations  of  a  new  instinct 
come  into  play,  —  that  instinct  which  anticipates  a  life  after 
the  grave,  and  reposes  in  implicit  faith  upon  a  God  alike 
just  and  good,  who  is  the  pledged  "  rewarder  of  all  who  dili- 
gently seek  Him."  And  in  looking  along  the  long  line  of 
being, — ever  rising  in  the  scale  from  higher  to  3'et  higher 
manifestations,  or  abroad  on  the  lower  animals,  whom 
instinct  never  deceives,  —  can  we  hold  that  man,  immeas- 
urably higher  in  his  place,  and  infinitely  higher  in  his  hopes 
and  aspirations,  than  all  that  ever  went  before  him,  should 
be,  notwithstanding,  the  one  grand  error  in  creation,  —  the 
one  painful  worker,  in  the  midst  of  present  trouble,  for  a 
state  into  which  he  is  never  to  enter,  —  the  befooled  expec- 
tant of  a  happy  future,  which  he  is  never  to  see?  As- 
suredly no.  He  who  keeps  faith  with  all  his  humbler 
creatures, —  who  gives  to  even  the  bee  and  the  dormouso 
the  winter  for  which  they  prepare,  —  will  to  a  certainty  not 
break  faith  with  man, —  with  man,  alike  the  deputed  lord  of 


140       THE    PAL^ONTOLOGICAL    HIS^TORT,    ETC. 

the  present  creation,  and  the  chosen  heir  of  all  the  future. 
We  have  been  looking  abroad  on  the  old  geologic  burjing- 
grounds,  and  deciphering  the  strange  inscriptions  on  their 
tombs ;  but  there  are  other  burying-grounds,  and  other 
tombs,  — solitary  church-j-ards  among  the  hills,  where  the 
dust  of  the  martyrs  lies,  and  tombs  that  rise  over  the  ashes 
of  the  wise  and  good ;  nor  are  there  a  wanting,  on  even  the 
monuments  of  the  perished  races,  frequent  hieroglj-phics, 
and  S3'mbols  of  high  meaning,  which  darkly  intimate  to  us, 
that  while  their  burial-yards  contain  but  the  debris  of  the 
past,  we  are  to  regard  the  others  as  charged  with  the  sown 
seed  of  the  future. 


LECTURE    THIRD. 

THE  TWO  RECORDS,  MOSAIC  AND   GEOLOGICAL. 

It  is  now  exactly  fiffc}''  years  since  a  clergyman  of  the 
Scottish  Church,  engaged  in  lecturing  at  St.  Andrews, 
took  occasion,  in  enumerating  the  various  earths  of  the 
chemist,  to  allude  to  the  science,  then  in  its  infanc}",  that 
specially  deals  with  the  rocks  and  soils  which  these  earths 
compose.  "  There  is  a  prejudice,"  he  remarked,  "  against 
the  speculations  of  the  geologist,  which  I  am  anxious  to 
remove.  It  has  been  said  that  they- nurture  infidel  pro- 
pensities. It  has  been  alleged  that  geology,  by  referring 
the  origin  of  the  globe  to  a  higher  antiquity  than  is 
assigned  to  it  bj'  the  writings  of  Moses,  undermines  our 
faith  in  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  and  in  all  the  animating 
prospects  of  the  immortalit}^  which  it  unfolds.  This  is  a 
false  alarm.  The  writings  of  Moses  do  not  fix  the  antiquity 
of  the  globe." 

The  bold  lecturer  on  this  occasion,  —  for  it  needed  no 
small  courage  in  a  divine  of  an}^  Established  Church  to 
take  up,  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  a 
position  so  determined  on  the  geologic  side,  —  was  at 
the  time  an  obscure  young  man,  characterized,  in  the 
small  circle  in  which  he  moved,  by  the  ardor  of  his 
temperament  and  the  breadth  and  originality  of  his  views  ; 
but  not  yet  distinguished  in  the  science  or  literature  of 
his  country,  and  of  comparatively'  little  weight  in  the  theo- 
logical field.     He  was   marked,  too,  by  what  his  soberer 


142  THE    TWO    EECOKDS, 

acquaintance  deemed  eccentricities  of  thought  and  conduct. 
When  the  opposite  view  was  all  but  universal,  he  held  and 
taught  that  free  trade  Avould  be  not  only  a  general  benefit 
to  the  people  of  this  country,  but  would  inflict  permanent 
injury  on  no  one  class  or  portion  of  them  ;  and  further,  at 
a  time  when  the  streets  and  lanes  of  all  the  great  cities  of 
the  empire  were  lighted  with  oil  bui'nt  in  lamps,  he  held 
that  the  time  was  not  distant  when  a  carburetted  hydro- 
gen gas  would  be  substituted  instead  ;  and,  on  getting  his 
snug  parsonage-house  repaired,  he  actually  introduced  into 
the  walls  a  system  of  tubes  and  pipes  for  the  passage  into 
its  various  rooms  of  the  gaseous  fluid  yet  to  be  emplo3'ed 
as  the  illuminating  agent.  Time  and  experience  have  since 
impressed  their  stamp  on  these  supposed  eccentricities,  and 
shown  them  to  be  the  sagacious  forecastings  of  a  man  who 
saw  further  and  more  clearly  than  his  contemporaries  ;  and 
fame  has  since  blown  his  name  very  widel}^,  as  one  of  the 
most  comprehensive  and  enlightened,  and  withal,  one 
of  the  most  thoroughly  earnest  and  sincere,  of  modern 
theologians.  The  bold  lecturer  of  St.  Andrews  was  Dr. 
Thomas  Chalmers,  —  a  divine  whose  writings  are  now 
known  wherever  the  English  language  is  spoken,  and 
whose  wonderful  eloquence  lives  in  memory  as  a  vanished 
power,  which  even  his  extraordinary  writings  fail  ade- 
quately to  represent.  And  in  the  position  which  he  took 
up  at  this  early  period  with  respect  to  geology  and  the 
Divine  Record,  we  have  j'et  another  instance  of  the  great 
sagacity  of  the  man,  and  of  his  ability  of  correctly  esti- 
mating the  prevailing  weight  of  the  evidence  with  which, 
though  but  partiall}^  collected  at  the  time,  the  geologist 
was  preparing  to  establish  the  leading  propositions  of  his 
science.  Even  in  this  late  age,  when  the  scientific  stand- 
ing of  geolog}'  is  all  but  universally  recognized,  and  the 
vast  periods  of  time  which   it   demands   fully  conceded. 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  I43 

neither  geologist  nor  theologian  could,  in  any  new  scheme 
of  reconciliation,  shape  his  first  proposition  more  skilfully 
than  it  was  shaped  by  Chalmers  a  full  half  century  ago. 
It  has  formed  since  that  time  the  preliminary  proposition 
of  those  ornaments  of  at  once  science  and  the  English 
Chui'ch,  the  present  venerable  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
Dr.  Bird  Sumner,  with  Doctors  Bucldand,  Conybeare,  and 
Professor  Sedgwick ;  of  eminent  evangelistic  Dissenters 
too,  such  as  the  late  Dr.  P^-e  Smith,  Dr.  John  Harris, 
Dr.  Robert  Vaughan,  Dr.  James  Hamilton,  and  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Binne}^, — enlightened  and  distinguished  men,  who  all 
came  early  to  the  conclusion,  with  the  lecturer  of  St.  An- 
drews, that  "  the  writings  of  Moses  do  not  fix  the  antiquity 
of  the  globe." 

In  1814,  ten  years  after  the  date  of  the  St.  Andrews'  lec- 
tures. Dr.  Chalmers  produced  his  more  elaborate  scheme  of 
reconciliation  between  the  Divine  and  the  Geologic  Records, 
in  a  "  Review  of  Cuvier's  Theory  of  the  Earth ; "  and  that 
scheme,  perfectly  adequate  to  bring  the  Mosaic  narrative 
into  harmony  with  what  was  known  at  the  time  of  geologic 
history,  has  been  very  extensively  received  and  adopted. 
It  ma}^,  indeed,  still  be  regarded  as  the  most  popular  of  the 
various  existing  schemes.  It  teaches,  and  teaches  truly, 
that  between  the  first  act  of  creation,  which  evoked  out  of 
the  previous  nothing  the  matter  of  the  heavens  and  earth, 
and  the  first  act  of  the  first  day's  work  recorded  in  Genesis, 
periods  of  vast  duration  may  have  intervened  ;  but  further, 
it  insists  that  the  days  themselves  were  but  natural  daj's  of 
twenty-four  hours  each  ;  and  that,  ere  they  began,  the  earth 
though  mayhap  in  the  previous  period  a  fair  residence  of 
life,  had  become  void  and  formless,  and  the  sun,  moon,  and 
stars,  though  mayhap  they  had  before  given  light,  had  been, 
at  least  in  relation  to  our  planet,  temporarily  extinguished. 
In  short,  while  it  teaches  that  the  successive  creations  of 


144  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

the  geologist  may  all  have  found  ample  room  in  the  period 
preceding  that  creation  to  which  man  belongs,  it  teaches  also 
that  the  record  in  Genesis  bears  reference  to  but  the  existing 
creation,  and  that  there  lay  between  it  and  the  preceding 
ones  a  chaotic  period  of  death  and  darkness.     The  scheme 
propounded  by  the  late  Dr.  Pj-e  Smith,  and  since  adopted 
by  several  writers,  differs  from  that  of  Chalmers  in  but  one 
circumstance,  though  an  important  one.     Dr.  Smith  held, 
with  the  great  northern  divine,  that  the  Mosaic  days  were 
natural  days  ;  that  they  were  preceded  by  a  chaotic  period  ; 
and  that  the  work  done  in  them  related  to  but  that  last  of 
the  creations  to  which  the  human  species  belongs.     Further, 
however,  he  held  in  addition,  that  the  chaos  of  darkness 
and  confusion  out  of  which  that  creation  was  called  was  of 
but  limited  extent,  and  that  outside  its  area,  and  during  the 
period  of  its  existence,  many  of  our  present  lands  and  seas 
may  have  enjoj^ed  the  light  of  the  sun,  and  been  tenanted 
by  animals  and  occupied  by  plants,  the  descendants  of  which 
still  continue  to  exist.     The  treatise  of  Dr.  Pye  Smith  was 
published  exactly  a  quarter  of  a  century  posterior  to  the 
promulgation,  through  the  press,  of  the  argument  of  Dr. 
Chalmers  ;  and  this  important  addition,  —  elaborated  by  its 
author  between  the  years  1837  and  1839,  —  seems  to  have 
been  made  to  suit  the  more  advanced  state  of  geological 
science  at  the  time.     The  scheme  of  reconciliation  perfectly 
adequate  in  1814  was  found  in  1839  to  be  no  longer  so ;  and 
this  mainly  through  a  peculiarity  in  the  order  in  which 
geological  fact  has  been  evolved  and  accumulated  in  this 
country,  and  the   great   fossiliferous  system  studied  and 
wrought  out ;   to   which  I  must   be  permitted   brieflj^  to 
advert. 

William  Smith,  the  "  Father  of  English  Geology,"  as  he 
has  been  well  termed  (a  humble  engineer  and  mineral  sur- 
veyor, possessed  of  l)ut  the  ordinary  education  of  men  of 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  145 

his  class  ana  profession) ,  was  born  upon  the  English  Oolite, 
—  that  S3'stem  which,  among  the  five  prevailing  divisions 
of  the  great  Secondary'  class  of  rocks,  holds  exactly  the 
middle  place.  The  Triassic  system  and  the  Lias  lie  beneath 
it ;  the  Cretaceous  system  and  the  Weald  rest  above. 
Smith,  while  yet  a  child,  had  his  attention  attracted  by  the 
Oolitic  fossils  ;  and  it  was  observed,  that  while  his  youthful 
contemporaries  had  their  garnered  stores  of  marbles  pur- 
chased at  the  toy  shop,  he  had  collected,  instead,  a  hoard  of 
spherical  fossil  terebratulse,  which  served  the  purposes  of 
the  game  equally  well.  The  interest  which  he  took  in 
organic  remains,  and  the  deposits  in  which  they  occur, 
influenced  him  in  the  choice  of  a  profession  ;  and,  when  sup- 
porting himself  in  honest  independence  as  a  skilful  mineral 
surveyor  and  engineer,  he  travelled  over  many  thousand 
miles  of  countrj^,  taking  as  his  starting  point  the  city  of 
Bath,  which  stands  near  what  is  termed  the  Great  Oolite ; 
and  from  that  centre  he  carefully  explored  the  various 
Secondary  formations  above  and  below.  He  ascertained 
that  these  alwaj^s  occur  in  a  certain  determinate  order;  that 
each  contains  fossils  peculiar  to  itself ;  and  that  they  run 
diagonally  across  the  kingdom  in  nearly  parallel  lines  from 
north-east  to  south-west.  And,  devoting  ever}-  hour  which 
he  could  snatch  from  his  professional  labors  to  the  work,  in 
about  a  quarter  of  a  century,  or  rather  more,  he  completed 
his  great  stratigraphical  map  of  England.  But,  though  a 
truly  Herculean  achievement,  regarded  as  that  of  a  single 
man  unindebted  to  public  support,  and  uncheered  b}'  even 
any  very  general  sj'mpath}^  in  his  labors,  it  was  found  to  be 
chiefl}'^  valuable  in  its  tracings  of  the  Secondary  deposits, 
and  strictly  exact  in  only  that  Oolitic  centre  from  which  his 
labors  began.  It  was  remarked  at  an  early  period  that  he 
ought  to  have  restricted  his  publication  to  the  formations 

which  lie  between  the  Chalk  and  the  Eed  Marl  inclusive  • 
13 


146  THE    TWO    RECORDS. 

or,  in  other  words,  to  the  great  Secondary  division.  The 
Coal  Measures  had,  however,  been  previously  better  known, 
from  their  economic  importance,  and  the  number  of  the 
workings  opened  among  them,  than  the  deposits  of  any 
other  system  ;  and  ere  the  publication  of  the  map  of  Smith, 
Cuvier  and  Brogniart  had  rendered  famous  all  over  the 
world  the  older  Tertiary  formations  of  the  age  of  the  Lon- 
don Clay.  But  both  ends  of  the  geological  scale,  compris- 
ing those  ancient  systems  older  than  the  Coal,  and  repre- 
sentative of  periods  in  which,  so  far  as  is  yet  known,  life, 
animal  and  vegetable,  first  began  upon  our  planet,  and  those 
S3"stems  of  comparatively  modern  date,  representative  of 
the  periods  which  immediately  preceded  the  human  epoch, 
were  equally  unknown.  The  light  fell  strongly  on  only  that 
middle  portion  of  the  series  on  which  the  labors  of  Smith 
had  been  mainly  concentrated.  The  vast  geologic  bridge, 
i\'hich,like  that  in  the  exquisite  allegory  of  Addison,  strode 
across  a  "  part  of  the  gi-eat  tide  of  eternity,"  "  had  a  black 
cloud  hanging  at  each  end  of  it."  And  such  was  the  state 
of  geologic  science  when,  in  1814,  Dr.  Chalmers  framed 
his  scheme  of  reconciliation. 

Since  that  time,  however,  a  light  not  less  strong  than  the 
one  thrown  by  William  Smith  on  the  formations  of  the 
Lias  and  the  Oolite  has  been  cast  on  both  the  older  and 
the  newer  fossiliferous  systems.  Two  great  gaps  still 
remain  to  be  filled  up,  —  that  which  separates  the  Palae- 
ozoic from  the  Secondary  division,  and  that  which  sepa- 
rates the  Secondary  from  the  Tertiary  one.  But  they 
occur  at  neither  end  of  the  geological  scale.  Mainly 
through  the  labors  of  two  distinguished  geologists,  who, 
finding  the  geologic  school  of  their  own  country  distracted 
by  a  fierce  and  fruitless  controvers}^  attached  themselves 
to  the  geologic  school  of  England,  and  have  since  received 
the   honor    of   knighthood   in   acknowledgment    of   their 


MOSAIC    AND     GEOLOGICAL.  I47 

I.'ibors,  both  ends  of  the  geologic  scale  have  been  com- 
pleted. Sh-  Koderick  Miirchison  addressed  himself  to  the 
formations  older  than  the  Coal,  more  especially  to  the 
Upper  and  Lower  Silurian  systems,  from  the  Ludlow  rocks 
to  the  Llandcilo  flags.  The  Old  Red  Sandstone,  too,  a 
S3'stem  which  lies  more  immediately  beneatli  the  Coal,  has 
also  been  explored,  and  its  various  deposits,  with  their 
peculiar  organic  remains,  enumerated  and  described.  And 
Sir  Charles  L^-ell,  setting  himself  to  the  other  extremity 
of  the  scale,  has  wrought  out  the  Tertiary  formations,  and 
separated  them  into  the  four  great  divisions  which  they 
are  now  recognized  as  forming.  And  of  these,  the  very 
names  indicate  that  certain  proportions  of  their  organisms 
still  continue  to  exist.  It  is  a  great  fact,  now  fully  estab- 
lished in  the  course  of  geological  discovery,  that  between 
the  plants  which  in  the  present  time  cover  the  earth,  and 
the  animals  which  inhabit  it,  and  the  animals  and  plants 
of  the  later  extinct  creations,  there  occurred  no  break  or 
blank,  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  many  of  the  existing 
organisms  were  contemporary,  during  the  morning  of  their 
being,  with  many  of  the  extinct  ones  during  the  evening 
of  theirs.  We  know  further,  that  not  a  few  of  the  shells 
which  now  live  on  our  coasts,  and  several  of  even  the  wild 
animals  which  continue  to  survive  amid  our  tracts  of  hill 
and  forest,  were  in  existence  many  ages  ere  the  human  age 
began.  Instead  of  dating  their  beginning  only  a  single 
natural  day,  or  at  most  two  "natural  da3's,  in  advance  of 
man,  they  must  have  preceded  him  by  many  thousands  of 
years.  In  fine,  in  consequence  of  that  comparatively  recent 
extension  of  geologic  fact  in  the  direction  of  the  later  sys- 
tems and  formations,  through  which  we  are  led  to  know 
that  the  present  creation  was  not  cut  off  abruptly  from  the 
preceding  one,  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  it  dovetailed  into  it 
at  a  thousand  diflerent  points,  vvc  are  led  also  to  know,  tliat 


148  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

any  scheme  of  reconciliation  which  would  separate  between 
the  recent  and  the  extinct  existences  by  a  chaotic  gulf  of 
death  and  darkness,  is  a  scheme  which  no  longer  meets  the 
necessities  of  the  case.  Though  perfectly  adequate  forty 
years  ago,  it  has  been  gi-eatlj^  outgrown  by  the  progress 
of  geological  discovery,  and  is,  as  I  have  said,  adequate  no 
longer ;  and  it  becomes  a  not  unimportant  matter  to  deter- 
mine the  special  scheme  that  would  bring  into  completest 
harmony  the  course  of  creation,  as  now  ascertained  by  the 
geologist,  and  that  brief  but  sublime  narrative  of  its  prog- 
ress which  forms  a  meet  introduction  in  Holy  Writ  to  the 
history  of  the  human  family.  The  first  question  to  which 
we  must  address  ourselves  in  any  such  inquiry  is  of  course 
a  very  obvious  one, —  WJiat  are  the  facts  scientifically 
determined  which  now  demand  a  new  scheme  of  reconcilia- 
tion ? 

There  runs  around  the  shores  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  a  flat  terrace  of  unequal  breadth,  backed  by  an 
escarpment  of  varied  height  aud  character,  which  is  known 
to  geologists  as  the  old  coast-line.  On  this  flat  terrace 
most  of  the  seaport  towns  of  the  empire  are  built.  The 
subsoil  which  underlies  its  covering  of  vegetable  mould 
consists  usually  of  stratified  sands  and  gravels,  arranged 
after  the  same  fashion  as  on  the  neighboring  beach,  and 
interspersed  in  the  same  manner  with  sea  shells.  The 
escarpment  behind,  when  formed  of  materials  of  no  great 
coherency,  such  as  gravel  or  clay,  exists  as  a  sloping,  grass- 
covered  bank,  —  at  one  place  running  out  into  promontories 
that  encroach  upon  the  terrace  beneath,  —  at  another 
receding  into  picturesque,  bay-like  recesses ;  and  where 
composed,  as  in  man}-  localities,  of  rock  of  an  enduring 
quality,  we  find  it  worn,  as  if  by  the  action  of  the  surf,  — 
in  some  parts  relieved  into  insulated  stacks,  in  others  hol- 
lowed into   deep   caverns,  —  in  short,  presenting  all  the 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  149 

appearance   of  a  precipitous  coast-line,  subjected   to  the 
action  of  the  waves.     Now,  no  geologist  can  or  does  d(yubt 
that  this  escarpment  was  at  one  time  the  coast-line  of  the 
island,  —  the  line  against  which  the  waves  broke  at  high 
water  in  some  distant  age,  when  either  the  sea  stood  from 
twenty  to  thirty  feet  higher  along  our  shores  than  it  does 
now,  or  the   land   sat  from  twenty  to  thirty  feet  lower. 
Nor  can  the  geologist  doubt,  that  along  the  flat  terrace 
beneath,  with  its  stratified  beds  of  sand  and  gravel,  and  its 
accumulations  of  sea  shells,  the  tides  must  have  risen  and 
fallen  twice  every  day,  as  they  now  rise  and  fall  along  the 
beach  that  at  present  girdles  our  country.     But,  in  refer- 
ence to  at  least  human  histor}',  the  age  of  the  old  coast-line 
and  terrace  must  be  a  very  remote  one.     Though  geologi- 
cally recent,  it  lies  far  bej'ond  the  reach  of  any  written 
record.     It  has  been  shown  b}''  Mr.  Smith,  of  Jordanhill, 
one  of  our  highest  authorities  on  the  subject,  that  the  wall 
of  Antoninus,  erected  by  the  Romans  as  a  protection  against 
the  Northern  Caledonians,  was  made  to  terminate  at  the 
Friths  of  Forth  and  Clyde,  with  relation,  not  to  the  level 
of  the  old  coast-line,  but  to  that  of  the  existing  one.     And 
so  we  must  infer  that,  ere  the  year  A.  D.  140  (the  j-ear 
during   which,   according  to  our  antiquaries,  the  greater 
part  of  the  wall  was  erected)   the  old  coast-line  had  at- 
tained to   its   present  elevation   over  the   sea.     Further, 
however,   we    know   from    the    history   of   Diodorus   the 
Sicilian,  that  at  a  period  earlier  by  at  least  two  hundred 
years,  St.  Michael's  Mount,  in  Cornwall,  was  connected 
with  the  mainland  at  low  Avater,  just  as  it  is  now,  by  a  flat 
isthmus,  across  which,  upon   the  falling  of  the  tide,  the 
ancient  Cornish  miners  used  to  carry  over  their  tin  in  carts. 
Had  the  relative  levels  of  sea  and  land  been  those  of  the 
old  coast-line  at  the  time,  St.  Michael's  Mount,  instead  of 
being  accessible  at  low  ebb   would   have  been  separated 
13* 


150  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

from  the  shore  bj  a  strait  from  three  to  five  fathoms  in 
depth.  It  would  not  have  been  then  as  now,  as  described 
in  the  verse  of  Carew,  — 

"  Both  land  and  island  twice  a  day." 

But  even  the  incidental  notice  of  Diodorus  Siculus 
represents  very  inadequately  the  antiquity  of  the  existing 
coast-line.  Some  of  its  caves,  hollowed  in  hard  rock  in  the 
line  of  faults  and  shifts  by  the  attrition  of  the  surf,  are 
more  than  a  hundred  feet  in  depth ;  and  it  must  have 
required  many  centuries  to  excavate  tough  trap  or  rigid 
gneiss  to  a  depth  so  considerable,  by  a  process  so  slow. 
And  yet,  however  long  the  sea  may  have  stood  against  the 
present  coast-line,  it  must  have  stood  for  a  considerably 
longer  period  against  the  ancient  one.  The  latter  presents 
generall}^  marks  of  greater  attrition  than  the  modern  line, 
and  its  wave-hollowed  caves  are  of  a  depth  considerably 
more  profound.  In  determining,  on  an  extensive  tract  of 
coast,  the  average  profimdit}'  of  both  classes  of  caverns 
from  a  considerable  number  of  each,  I  ascertained  that  the 
proportional  average  depth  of  the  modern  to  the  ancient 
is  as  two  to  three.  For  every  two  centuries,  then,  during 
which  the  waves  have  been  scooping  out  the  caves  of  the 
present  coast-line,  they  must  have  been  engaged  for  three 
centuries  in  scooping  out  those  of  the  old  one.  But  we 
know  Jiistorically,  that  for  at  least  twenty  centuries  the 
sea  has  been  toiling  in  these  modern  caves  ;  and  ivho  shall 
dare  affirm  that  it  has  not  been  toiling  in  them  for  at  least 
ten  centuries  more?  But  if  the  sea  has  stood  for  but  even 
two  thousand  six  hundred  years  against  the  present  coast- 
line (and  no  geologist  would  dare  fix  his  estimate  lower), 
then  must  it  have  stood  against  the  old  line,  ere  it  could 
have  excavated  caves  one  third  deeper,  three  thousand  nine 
hundred  3'ears.     And  both  periods  united  (six   thousand 


MOSAIC    AND     GEOLOGICAL.  151 

five  hundred  j'ears)  more  than  exhaust  the  Hebrew  chro 
nolog3%  Yet  what  a  mere  beginning  of  geologic  history 
does  not  the  epoch  of  tlie  old  coast-line  form  !  It  is  but  a 
mere  starting  point  from  the  recent  period.  Not  a  single 
shell  seems  to  have  become  extinct  during  the  last  six 
thousand  five  hundred  3-ears !  The  shells  which  lie  em- 
bedded in  the  subsoils  beneath  the  old  coast-line  are  exactly 
those  which  still  live  in  our  seas. 

Above  this  ancient  line  of  coast  we  find,  at  various 
heights,  beds  of  shells  of  vastly  older  date  than  those  of 
the  low-lying  terrace,  and  many  of  which  are  no  longer  to 
be  found  living  around  our  shores.  I  spent  some  time  last 
autumn  in  exploring  one  of  these  beds,  once  a  sea  bottom, 
but  now  raised  two  hundred  and  thirty  feet  over  the  sea, 
in  which  there  occurred  great  numbers  of  shells  now  not 
British,  though  found  in  many  parts  of  Britain  at  heights 
var3-ing  from  two  lumdred  to  nearly  fourteen  hundred  feet 
over  the  existing  sea  level.  But  though  no  longer  British 
shells,  thej  are  shells  that  stilk  continue  to  live  in  high 
northern  latitudes,  as  on  the  shores  of  Iceland  and  Spitz- 
bergen  ;  and  the  abundance  in  which  they  were  developed 
on  the  submerged  plains  and  hill-sides  of  what  are  now  Eng- 
land and  Scotland,  during  what  is  termed  the  Pleistocene 
period,  shows  of  itself  what  a  verj'  protracted  period  that 
was.  The  prevailing  tellina  of  the  bed  which  I  last  ex- 
plored,—  a  bed  which  occurs  in  some  places  six  miles 
inland,  in  others  elevated  on  the  top  of  dizzy  crags,  —  is 
a  suc-arctic  shell  {Tellina  proximo)^  of  which  only  dead 
valves  are  now  to  be  detected  on  our  coasts,  but  which 
may  be  found  living  at  the  North  Cape  and  in  Greenland. 
The  prevailing  astarte,  its  contemporary-,  was  Astarte 
arctica,  now  so  rare  as  a  British  species,  that  man}^  of  our 
most  sedulous  collectors  have  never  seen  a  native  specimen, 
but  which  is  comparatively'^  common  on  the  northern  shores 


152 


THE    TWO    RECORDS, 


of  Iceland,  and  on  the  eastern  coasts  of  Norway,  within 
the  arctic  circle.  In  this  elevated  Scottish  bed  of  the 
Pleistocene  period  I  laid  these  boreal  shells  open  to  the 


Fig.  87. 


Fig.  88. 


ASTARTE  ARCTICA. 


TELLINA  PROXIMA. 


light  by  hundreds,  on  the  spot  evidently  where  the  indi- 
viduals had  lived  and  died.  Under  the  severe  climatal 
conditions  to  which  (probably  from  some  change  in  the 
direction  of  the  gulf  stream)  what  is  now  Northern  Eu- 
rope had  been  brought,  this  tellina  and  astarte  had  in- 
creased and  multiplied  until  they  became  prevailing  shells 
of  the  British  area  ;  and  this  increase  must  have  been  the 
slow  work  of  ages,  during  which  the  plains,  and  not  a  few 
of  the  table  lands,  of  the  country,  were  submerged  in  a 
sub-arctic  sea,  and  Great  Britain  existed  as  but  a  scattered 
archipelago  of  wintry  islands.  But  in  a  still  earlier  period, 
of  which  there  exists  unequivocal  evidence  in  the  buried 
forests  of  Happisburgh  and  Cromer,  the  country  had  not 
only  its  head  above  water,  as  now,  but  seems  to  have 
possessed  even  more  than  its  present  breadth  of  surface. 
During  this  ancient  time,  —  more  remote  by  many  cen- 
turies than  not  only  the  times  of  the  old  coast-line,  but 
than  even  those  of  the  partial  submergence  of  the  island, 
—  that  northern  mammoth  lived  in  great  abundance,  of 
which,  the  remains  have  been  found  by  hundreds  in  Eng- 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  153 

land  alone,  together  with  the  northern  hippopotamus,  and 
at  least  two  northern  species  of  rhinoceros.  And  though 
they  have  all  ceased  to  exist,  with  their  wild  associates  in 
the  forests  and  jungles  of  the  Pleistocene,  the  cave-hjajna, 
the  cave-tiger,  and  the  cave-bear,  we  know  that  the  descend- 
ants of  some  of  their  feebler  contemporaries,  such  as  the 
badger,  the  fox,  the  wild  cat,  and  the  red  deer,  still  live 
amid  our  hills  and  brakes.  The  trees,  too,  under  which 
they  roamed,  and  whose  remains  we  find  buried  in  the 
same  deposits  as  theirs,  were  of  species  that  still  hold  their 
place  as  aboriginal  trees  of  the  country,  or  of  at  least  the 
more  northerly  provinces  of  the  continent.  The  common 
Scotch  fir,  the  common  birch,  and  a  continental  species  of 
conifer   of  the   far   north,   the  Norwegian  spruce   (Abiei 

Fig.  89. 


NORWEGIAN  SPRUCE. 

(Abies  excclsa.) 


excelsa),  have  been  found  underlying  the  Pleistocene  drift, 
and  rooted  in  the  mammiferous  crag ;  and  for  many  ages 
must  the  old  extinct   elephant  have  roamed   amid  these 


154  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

familiar  trees.  From  one  limited  tract  of  sea  bottom  on 
the  Norfolk  coast  the  fishermen  engaged  in  dredging 
oysters  brought  ashore,  in  the  course  of  thirteen  years 
(from  1820  to  1833),  no  fewer  than  two  thousand  elephants' 
grinders,  besides  great  tusks  and  numerous  portions  of 
skeletons.  It  was  calculated  that  these  remains  could  not 
have  belonged  to  fewer  than  five  hundred  individual  mam- 
moths of  English  growth ;  and,  various  in  their  states  of 
keeping,  and  belonging  to  animals  of  which  only  a  few  at 
a  time  could  have  found  sufficient  food  in  a  limited  tract  of 
countr}',  the  inference  seems  inevitable  that  they  must  have 
belonged,  not  to  one  or  two,  but  to  many  succeeding  gen- 
erations. The  further  fact,  that  remains  of  this  ancient 
elephant  (Eleplias  primigenius)  occur  all  round  the  globe 
in  a  broad  belt,  extending  from  the  fortieth  to  near  the 
seventieth  degree  of  north  latitude,  leads  to  the  same 
conclusion.  It  must  have  required  many  ages  ere  an 
animal  that  breeds  so  slowly  as  the  elephant  could  have 
extended  itself  over  an  area  so  vast. 

Many  of  the  contemporaries  of  this  northern  mammoth, 
especially  of  its  moUuscan  contemporaries,  continue,  as  I 
have  said,  to  live  in  their  descendants.  Of  even  a  still  more 
ancient  period,  represented  by  the  Red  Crag,  seventy  out  of 
every  hundred  species  of  shells  still  exist ;  and  of  an  older 
period  still,  represented  by  the  Coraline  Crag,  there  survive 
sixty  out  of  every  hundred.  In  the  Red  Crag,  for  instance, 
we  find  the  first  known  ancestors  of  our  common  edible 
periwinkle  and  common  edible  mussel ;  and  in  the  Coraline 
Crag,  the  first  known  ancestors  of  the  common  horse-mussel, 
the  common  wheUi,  the  common  oyster,  and  the  great  pec- 
ten.  Then  there  occurs  a  break  in  the  geologic  deposits  of 
Britain,  which,  however,  in  other  parts  of  Europe  we  find 
so  filled  up  as  to  render  it  evident  that  no  corresponding 
break  took  place  in  the  chain  of  existence  ;  but  that,  on  the 


MOSAIC    AND     GEOLOGICAL  155 

contrary,  from  the  present  time  up  to  the  times  represented 
b}-^  the  earliest  Eocene  formations  of  the  Tertiary  division, 
day  has  succeeded  day,  and  season  has  followed  season,  and 
that  no  chasm  or  hiatus  —  no  age  of  general  chaos,  dark- 
ness, and  death  —  has  occurred,  to  break  the  line  of  succes- 
sion, or  check  the  course  of  life.  All  the  evidence  runs 
counter  to  the  supposition  that  immediately  before  the 
appearance  of  man  upon  earth,  there  existed  a  chaotic  period 
which  separated  the  previous  from  the  present  creation. 
Up  till  the  comiiienccment  of  the  Eocene  ages,  if  even  then, 
there  was  no  such  chaotic  period,  in  at  least  what  is  now 
Britain  and  the  European  continent :  the  persistency  from  a 
high  antiquity  of  some  of  the  existing  races,  of  not  only 
plants  and  shells,  but  of  even  some  of  the  mammiferous 
animals,  such  as  the  badger,  the  goat,  and  the  wild  cat, 
prove  there  was  not ;  and  any  scheme  of  reconciliation 
which  takes  such  a  period  for  granted  must  be  deemed  as 
unsuited  to  the  present  state  of  geologic  knowledge,  as  any 
scheme  would  have  been  forty  j-ears  ago  which  took  it  for 
granted  that  the  writings  of  Moses  do  "  fix  the  antiquity  of 
the  globe." 

The  scheme  of  reconciliation  adopted  by  the  late  Dr.  Pye 
Smith,  though,  save  in  one  particular,  identical,  as  I  have 
said,  with  that  of  Dr.  Chalmers,  is  made,  in  virtue  of  its 
single  point  of  difference,  to  steer  clear  of  the  diflicalty. 
Both  schemes  exhibit  the  creation  recorded  in  Genesis  as  an 
event  which  took  place  about  six  thousand  years  ago  ;  both 
describe  it  as  begun  and  comjileted  in  six  natural  days  ; 
and  both  represent  it  as  cut  off  from  a  previously  existing 
creation  by  a  chaotic  period  of  death  and  darkness.  But 
while,  according  to  the  scheme  of  Chalmers,  both  the  Bib- 
lical creation  and  the  previous  period  of  death  are  repre- 
sented as  coextensive  with  the  globe,  they  are  represented, 
according  to  that  of  Dr.  Smith,  as  limited  and  local.     They 


156  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

may  have  extended,  it  is  said,  over  only  a  few  pro\nnces  of 
Central  Asia,  in  which,  when  all  was  life  and  light  in  other 
parts  of  the  globe,  there  reigned  for  a  time  only  death  and 
darkness  amid  the  welterings  of  a  chaotic  sea ;  which,  at  the 
Divine  command,  was  penetrated  b}'  light,  and  occupied  by 
dry  land,  and  ultimatel^^,  ere  the  end  of  the  creative  week, 
became  a  centre  in  which  certain  plants  and  animals,  and 
finally  man  himself,  were  created.     And  this  scheme,  by 
leaving  to  the  geologist  in  this  country  and  elsewhere,  save 
maj'hap  in  some  unknown  Asiatic  district,  his  unbroken 
series,  certainly  does  not  conflict  with  the  facts  educed  by 
geologic  discover}'.     It  virtually  removes  Scripture  alto- 
gether out  of  the  field.     I  must  confess,  however,  that  on 
this,  and  on  some  other  accounts,  it  has  failed  to  satisfy  me. 
I  have  stumbled,  too,  at  the  conception  of  a  merely  local 
and  limited  chaos,  in  which  the  darkness  would  be  so  com- 
plete, that  when  fii-st  penetrated  b}'  the  light,  that  pene- 
tration could  be  described  as  actuall}'  a  making  or  creating 
of  light ;  and  that,  while  life  obtained  all  around  its  pre- 
cincts, could  j-et  be  thoroughly'  void  of  life.     A  local  dark- 
ness so  profound  as  to  admit  no  ray  of  light  seems  to  have 
fallen  for  a  time  on  Eg^^^t,  as  one  of  the  ten  plagues  ;  but  the 
event  was  evidently  miraculous  ;  and  no  student  of  natural 
science  is  entitled  to  have  recourse,  in  order  to  extricate 
himself  out   of  a  difficult}',  to  supposititious,  unrecorded 
miracle.     Creation  cannot  take  place  without  miracle  ;  but 
it  would  be  a  strange  reversal  of  all  our  previous  conclusions 
on  the  subject,  should  we  have  to  hold  that  the  dead,  dark, 
blank,  out  of  wliich  creation  arose,  was  miraculous  also. 
And  if,  rejecting  miracle,  Ave  cast  ourselves  on  the  purely 
natural,   we  find  that  the  local  darknesses  dependent  on 
known  causes,  of  which  we  have   any  record  in  history, 
were  always  either  very  imperfect,  like  the  darkness  of  jour 
London  fogs,  or  very  temporary,  like  the  darkness  described 


MOSAIC    AND     GEOLOGICAL.  157 

by  Pliny  as  occasioned  by  a  cloud  of  volcanic  ashes  ;  and  so, 
altogether  inadequate  to  meet  the  demands  of  a  h3T)othesi3 
such  as  that  of  Dr.  Smith.  And  yet  further,  I  am  disposed, 
I  must  add,  to  look  for  a  broader  and  more  general  meaninty 
in  that  grand  description  of  the  creation  of  all  things  with 
which  the  Divine  record  so  appropriately  opens,  than  I  could 
recognize  it  as  forming,  were  I  assured  it  referred  to  but 
one  of  many  existing  creations,  —  a  creation  restricted  to 
mayhap  a  few  hundi-ed  square  miles  of  country,  and  to  may- 
hap a  few  scores  of  animals  and  plants.  What,  then,  is  the 
scheme  of  reconciliation  which  I  would  venture  to  pro- 
pound ? 

Let  me  first  remark,  in  reply,  that  I  come  before  you  this 
evening,  not  as  a  philologist,  but  simply  as  a  student  of 
geological  fact,  who,  believing  his  Bible,  believes  also,  that 
though  theologians  have  at  various  times  striven  hard  to 
pledge  it  to  false  science,  geographical,  astronomical,  and 
geological,  it  has  been  pledged  by  its  Divine  Author  to  no 
falsehood  whatever.  I  occupy  exactly  the  position  now, 
with  respect  to  geology,  that  the  mere  Christian  geographer 
would  have  occupied  with  respect  to  geography  in  the  da3's 
of  those  doctors  of  Salamanca  who  deemed  it  unscriptural 
to  hold  with  Columbus  that  the  world  is  round,  —  not  flat ; 
or  exactly  the  position  which  the  mere  Chiistian  astronomer 
would  have  occupied  with  respect  to  astronomy  in  the  daj's 
of  that  Francis  Turrettine  who  deemed  it  unscriptural  to 
hold  with  Newton  and  Galileo,  that  it  is  the  earth  which 
IUOVC3  iu  the  heavens,  and  the  sun  which  stands  still.  The 
mcie  geographer  or  astronomer  might  have  been  wholly 
unable  to  discuss  with  Turrettine  or  the  doctors  the  niceties 
of  Chaldaic  punctuation,  or  the  various  meanings  of  the 
Hebrew  verbs.  But  this  much,  notwithstanding,  he  would 
be  perfectly  qualified  to  say  :  —  However  great  your  skill  as 

linguists,  your  reading  of  what  you  term  the  scriptural 
14 


158  THE    TWO     RECORDS, 

geography  or  scriptural  astronomj''  must  of  necessity  be  a 
false  reading,  seeing  that  it  commits  Scripture  to  what,  in 
my  character  as  a  geographer  or  astronomer,  I  know  to  be 
a  monstrously  false  geogi'aphy  or  astronomy.  Premising, 
then,  that  I  make  no  pretensions  to  even  the  slightest  skill 
in  philolog}',  I  remark  further,  that  it  has  been  held  by 
accomplished  philologists,  that  the  da3-s  of  the  Mosaic 
creation  may  be  regarded,  without  doing  violence  to  the 
genius  of  the  Hebrew  language,  as  successive  periods  of 
great  extent.  And  certainl}-,  in  looking  at  my  English 
Bible,  I  find  that  the  portion  of  time  spoken  of  in  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis  as  six  days,  is  spoken  of  in  the  second 
chapter  as  one  day.  True,  there  are  other  philologers,  such 
as  the  late  Professor  Moses  Stuart,  who  take  a  different 
view ;  but  then  I  find  this  same  Professor  Stuart  striving 
hard  to  make  the  phraseology  of  Moses  "fix  the  antiquity 
of  the  globe ; "  and  so,  as  a  mere  geologist,  I  reject  his 
philology,  on  exactly  the  same  principle  on  which  the  mere 
geographer  would  reject,  and  be  justified  in  rejecting,  the 
philology  of  the  doctors  of  Salamanca,  or  on  which  the  mere 
astronomer  would  reject,  and  be  justified  in  rejecting,  the 
philology  of  Turrettine  and  the  old  Franciscans.  I  would, 
in  any  such  case,  at  once,  and  without  hesitation,  cut  the 
philological  knot,  by  determining  that  that  philology  cannot 
be  sound  which  would  commit  the  Scriptures  to  a  science 
that  cannot  be  true.  "Waiving,  however,  the  question  as  a 
philological  one,  and  simply  holding  with  Cuvier,  Parkinson, 
and  Silliman,  that  each  of  the  six  days  of  the  Mosaic  nar- 
rative in  the  first  chapter  were  what  is  assuredly  meant  by 
the  day  referred  to  in  the  second,  —  not  natural  daj^s,  but 
lengthened  periods,  —  I  find  mj^self  called  on,  as  a  geologist, 
to  account  for  but  three  of  the  six.  Of  the  period  during 
which  light  was  created,  —  of  the  period  daring  which  a 
firmament  was  made  to  separate  the  waters  from  the  waters, 


MOSAIC     AND    GEOLOGICAL.  159 

—  or  of  the  period  during  which  the  two  great  lights  of  the 
earth,  with  the  other  heavenly  bodies,  became  visible  from 
the  earth's  surface,  —  we  need  expect  to  find  no  record  in 
the  rocks.     Let  me,  however,  pause  for  a  moment,  to  re- 
mark the  peculiar  character  of  the  language  in  which  we 
are  first  introduced  in  the  Mosaic  narrative  to  the  heavenlj' 
bodies, —  sun,  moon,  and  stars.     The  moon,  though  abso- 
lutely one  of  the  smallest  lights  of  our  system,  is  described 
as  secondary  and  subordinate  to  only  its  greatest  light,  the 
sun.     It  is  tlie  apparent,  then,  not  the  actual,  which  we  find 
in  the  passage,  —  what  seemed  to  be,  not  what  was;  and  as 
it  was  merely  what  appeared  to  be  greatest  that  was  de- 
scribed as  gi'eatest,  on  what  grounds  are  we  to  hold  that  it 
may  not  also  have  been  what  appeared  at  the  time  to  be 
made  that  has  been  described  as  made  ?    The  sun,  moon, 
and  stars  may  have  been  created  long  before,  though  it  was 
not  until  this  fomth  period  of  creation  that  they  became 
visible  from  the  earth's  surface. 

The  geologist,  in  his  attempts  to  collate  the  Divine  with 
the  geologic  record,  has,  I  repeat,  onl}-  three  of  the  six 
periods  of  creation  to  account  for,  —  the  period  of  plants, 
the  period  of  great  sea  monsters  and  creeping  things,  and 
the  period  of  cattle  and  beasts  of  the  earth.  He  is  called 
on  to  question  his  systems  and  formations  regarding  the 
remains  of  these  three  great  periods,  and  of  these  only. 
And  the  question  once  fairly  stated,  what,  I  ask,  is  the 
reply  ?  All  geologists  agree  in  holding  that  the  vast  geo- 
logical scale  naturally  divides  into  tltrce  great  parts.  There 
are  many  lesser  divisions,  —  divisions  into  systems,  forma- 
tions, deposits,  beds,  strata ;  but  the  master  divisions,  in 
each  of  which  we  find  a  type  of  life  so  unlike  that  of  the 
others,  that  even  the  unpractised  e3'e  can  detect  the  differ- 
ence, are  simply  three, --the  Palaeozoic,  or  oldest  fossil- 


160  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

iferoiis  division  ;  the  Secondary,  or  middle  fossiliferous  di- 
vision ;  and  the  Tertiary,  or  latest  fossiliferous  division. 

In  the  first,  or  Palaeozoic  division,  we  find  coi'als,  crus- 
taceans, molluscs,  fishes,  and,  in  its  later  formations,  a  few 
rcjitiles.  But  none  of  these  classes  of  organisms  give  its 
leading  character  to  the  Pahneozoic  ;  they  do  not  constitute 
its  prominent  feature,  or  render  it  more  remarkable  as  a 
scene  of  life  than  any  of  the  divisions  which  followed. 
That  which  chiefly  distinguished  the  Palaeozoic  from  the 
Secondary  and  Tertiary  periods  was  its  gorgeous  flora.  It 
was  emphatically  the  period  of  plants,  —  "of  herbs  yield- 
ing seed  after  their  kind."  In  no  other  age  did  the  world 
ever  witness  such  a  flora:  the  youth  of  the  earth  was 
peculiarly  a  green  and  umbrageous  youth,  —  a  youth  of 
dusk  and  tangled  forests,  of  huge  pines  and  stately  arau- 
carians,  of  the  reed-like  calamite,  the  tall  tree-fern,  the  sculp- 
tured sigillaria,  and  the  hirsute  lepidodendron.  "Wherever 
dry  land,  or  shallow  lake,  or  running  stream  appeai'ed,  from 
where  Melville  Island  now  spreads  out  its  ice  wastes  under 
the  star  of  the  pole,  to  where  the  arid  plains  of  Australia 
lie  solitaiy  beneath  the  bright  cross  of  the  south,  a  rank 
and  luxuriant  herbage  cumbered  every  footbreadth  of  the 
dank  and  steaming  soil ;  and  even  to  distant  planets  our 
earth  must  have  shone  through  the  enveloping  cloud  with 
a  green  and  delicate  my.  Of  this  extraordinary  age  of 
plants  we  have  our  cheerful  remembrancers  and  witnesses 
in  the  flames  that  roar  in  our  chirane3*s  when  we  pile  up 
the  winter  fire,  —  in  the  brilliant  gas  that  now  casts  its 
light  on  this  great  assemblage,  and  that  lightens  up  the 
streets  and  lanes  of  this  vast  cit3',  —  in  the  glowing  fur- 
naces that  smelt  our  metals,  and  give  moving  power  to  our 
ponderous  engines,  —  in  the  long  dusky  trains  that,  with 
shriek  and  snort,  speed  dart-like  athwart  our  landscapes,  — 
and  in  the  gi-eat  cloud-enveloped  vessels  that  darken  the 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  161 

lower  reaches  of  your  noble  river,  and  rush  in  foam  over 
ocean  and  sea.  The  geologic  evidence  is  so  complete  as  to 
be  patent  to  all,  that  the  fii-st  great  period  of  orgaui::cd 
being  was,  as  described  in  the  Mosaic  record,  peculiarly 
a  period  of  herbs  and  trees,  "yielding  seed  after  their 
kind." 

The  middle  gi-eat  period  of  the  geologist  —  that  of  the 
Secondaiy  division  —  possessed,  like  the  earlier  one,  its 
herbs  and  plants,  but  they  were  of  a  gi'eatly  less  luxuriant 
and  conspicuous  character  than  their  predecessors,  and  no 
longer  formed  the  prominent  trait  or  feature  of  the  creation 
to  which  they  belonged.     The  period  had  also  its  corals, 
its  crustaceans,  its  molluscs,  its  fishes,  and  in  some  one 
or  two  exceptional  instances  its  dwarf  mammals.     But  the 
grand  existences  of  the  age,  —  the  existences  in  which  it 
excelled  every  other  creation,  earlier  or   later,  were  its 
huge   creeping    things,  —  its    enormous   monsters   of  the 
deep,  —  and,  as  shown  by  the  impressions  of  their  foot- 
prints stamped  upon  the  rocks,  its  gigantic  birds.     It  was 
peculiarl}^  the   age   of  egg-bearing   animals,  winged  and 
wingless.     Its  wonderful  whales^  not,  howcv^er,  as  now,  of 
the  mammalian,  but  of  the  reptilian  class,  —  ichthyosaui-s, 
plesiosaurs,   and   cetiosaurs,  —  must   have   tempested  the 
deep ;    its   creeping  lizards   and  crocodiles,   such   as   the 
teliosaurus,  megalosaurus,  and  iguanodou,  — creatures  some 
of  which   more    than   rivalled   the   existing   elephant    in 
height,  and  greatly  more  than  rivalled   him  in  bulk,  — 
must  have  crowded  the  plains  or  haunted  by  myriads  the 
rivers  of  the  period ;  and  we  know  that  the  footprints  of 
at  least  one  of  its  many  birds  are  fully  twice  the  sL^e  of 
those  made  by  the  horse  or  camel.     "We  are  thus  prepared 
to  demonstrate,  that  the  second  period  of  the  geologist 
was  peculiarly  and  characteristically  a  period  of  whale-like 
reptiles  of  the  sea,  of  enoi-mous  creeping  reptiles  of  the 

14* 


162  THE    TWO    RECOKDS, 

land,  and  of  numerous  birds,  some  of  them  of  gigantic 
size ;  and,  in  meet  accordance  with  the  fact,  we  find  that 
the  second  Mosaic  period  with  which  the  geologist  is  called 
on  to  deal  was  a  period  in  which  God  created  the  fowl 
that  flieth  above  the  earth,  with  moving  [or  creeping] 
creatures,  both  in  the  waters  and  on  the  land,  and  what 
our  translation  renders  great  whales,  but  that  I  find  ren- 
dered, in  the  margin,  great  sea  monsters. 

The  Tertiar}'  period  had  also  its  prominent  class  of  exist- 
ences. Its  flora  seems  to  have  been  no  more  conspicuous 
than  that  of  the  present  time ;  its  reptiles  occupy  a  very 
subordinate  place  ;  but  its  beasts  of  the  field  were  by  far 
the  most  wonderfulh'  developed,  both  in  size  and  numbers, 
that  ever  appeared  upon  earth.  Its  mammoths  and  its 
mastodons,  its  rhinoceri  and  its  hippopotami,  its  enormous 
dinotherium  and  colossal  megatherium,  gi-eatly  more  than 
equalled  in  buUi  the  largest  mammals  of  the  present  time, 
and  vastly  exceeded  them  in  number.  The  remains  of  one 
of  its  elephants  {Eleplias  primigenius)  are  still  so  abun- 
dant amid  the  frozen  wastes  of  Siberia,  that  what  have 
been  not  inappropriately  termed  "  ivoiy  quarries "  have 
been  wrought  among  their  bones  for  more  than  a  hunched 
j-ears.  Even  in  our  own  country,  of  which,  as  I  have 
already  shown,  this  elephant  was  for  long  ages  a  native,  so 
abundant  are  the  skeletons  and  tusks,  that  there  is  scarcely 
a  local  museum  in  the  kingdom  that  has  not  its  specimens, 
dug  out  of  the  Pleistocene  deposits  of  the  neighborhood. 
And  with  this  ancient  elephant  there  were  meetly  associ- 
ated in  Britain,  as  on  the  northern  continents  generally  all 
around  the  globe,  manj'  other  mammals  of  corresponding 
magnitude.  "  Grand  indeed, "  sa3^s  an  English  naturalist, 
"  was  the  fauna  of  the  British  islands  in  those  early  days. 
Tigers  as  large  again  as  the  biggest  Asiatic  species  lurked 
in  the  ancient  thickets  ;  elephants  of  nearly  twice  'he  bull? 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  163 

of  the  largest  individuals  that  now  exist  in  Africa  or  Cejlou 
roamed  in  herds  ;  at  least  two  species  of  rhinoceros  forced 
their  wa^'  through  the  primeval  forest ;  and  the  lakes  and 
rivers  were  tenanted  b^'  hippopotami  as  bulkj',  and  with  as 
great  tusks,  as  those  of  Africa."  The  massive  cave-bear 
and  large  cavc-h3fena  belonged  to  the  same  formidable 
group,  with  at  least  two  species  of  great  oxen  {Bos  longi- 
frons  and  Bos  j^?v■m/<7e«^Hs),  with  a  horse  of  smaller  size, 
and  an  elk  {Megaceros  Hibernicus)  that  stood  ten  feet 
four  inches  in  height.  Truly  this  Tertiary  age  —  this  third 
and  last  of  the  great  geologic  periods  —  was  peculiarly  the 
age  of  great  "  beasts  of  the  earth  after  their  kind,  and  of 
cattle  after  their  kind." 

Permit  me  at  this  stage,  in  addressing  mj'self  to  a  Lon- 
don audience,  to  refer  to  what  has  been  well  termed  one 
of  the  great  sights  of  London.  An  illustration  drawn  from 
what  must  be  familiar  to  3'ou  all  ma}"-  impart  to  j-our  con- 
ceptions, respecting  the  facts  on  which  I  build,  a  degree  of 
tangibility  which  otherwise  the}-  could  not  possess. 

One  of  perhaps  the  most  deepl}^  interesting  departments 
of  your  great  British  Museum — the  wonder  of  the  world 
—  is  that  noble  gallerj^  consisting  of  a  suite  of  rooms, 
opening  in  line,  the  one  be3'ond  the  other,  which  forms 
its  rich  storehouse  of  organic  remains.  You  must  of 
course  remember  the  order  in  which  the  organisms  of 
that  gallery  are  ranged.  The  visitor  is  first  ushered  into  a 
spacious  room  devoted  to  fossil  plants,  chieflj'  of  the  Coal 
Measures.  And  if  these  organisms  are  in  any  degree  less 
imposing  in  their  aspect  than  those  of  the  apartments 
which  follow  in  the  series,  it  is  only  because  that,  from 
the  exceeding  greatness  of  the  Coal  Measure  plants,  the}' 
can  be  exhibited  in  but  bits  and  fragments.  Within  less 
than  an  hour's  walk  of  the  Scottish  capital  there  are  single 
trees  of  this  ancient  period  deeply  embedded  in  the  sand- 


164 


THE    TWO    RECORDS, 


stone   strata,  which,  though  existing  as  mere  mutilated 
portions  of  their  former   selves,   would  yet  fail  to  find 


Fig.  90, 


I.EPIDODENDRON  STERNBERGII. 


accommodation  in  that  gi'eat  apartment.    One  of  these 
fossil  trees,  —  a  noble  araucarian,  —  which  occurs  in  what 


MOSAIC    AND     GEOLOGICAL. 


1G5 


is  known  as  the  Granton  quarr}',  is  a  mere  fragment,  for  it 
ivants  both  root  and  top,  and  yet  what  remains  is  sixty-one 

Fig.  91. 


CALAMITES  CANN^FORMIS. 


feet  in  length  by  six  feet  in  diameter ;  and  beside  it  there 
lies  a  smaller  ai-aucaiian,  also  mutilated,  for  it  wants  top 


166  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

aud  branches,  and  it  measui'es  seventy  feet  in  length  by  four 
feet  in  diameter.  I  saw  lately,  in  a  quarry  of  the  Coal  Meas- 
ures about  two  miles  from  my  dwelling-house,  near  Edin- 
burgh, the  stem  of  a  plant  {Lepidodendron  Sternbergii), 
allied  to  the  dwarfish  club  mosses  of  our  moors,  consid- 
erably thicker  than  the  body  of  a  man,  and  which,  reckon- 
ing on  the  ordinary  proportions  of  the  plant,  must  ha^-e 
been  at  least  seventy  feet  in  height.  And  of  a  kind  of 
aquatic  reed  (calamites),  that  more  resembles  the  diminu- 
tive mare's  tail  of  our  marshes  than  aught  else  that  now 
lives,  remains  have  been  found  in  abundance  in  the  same 
coal  field,  more  than  a  foot  in  diameter  by  thirty  feet  in 
length.  Imposing,  then,  as  are  the  vegetable  remains  of 
this  portion  of  the  National  Museum,  the}'  would  be 
greatly  more  imposing  still  did  they  more  adequately 
represent  the  gigantic  flora  of  the  remote  age  to  which 
the}'  belong. 

Passing  onwards  in  the  galler)'  from  the  great  plants  of 
the  Palaeozoic  division  to  the  animals  of  the  Secondary  one, 
the  attention  is  at  once  arrested  by  the  monstrous  forms  on 
the  wall.  Shapes  that  more  than  rival  in  strangeness  the 
great  dragons,  and  griffins,  and  "  laithly  worms,"  of  me- 
diaeval legend,  or,  according  to  Milton,  the  "gorgons, 
h3'dras,  and  chimeras  dire,"  of  classical  fable,  frown  on  the 
passing  visitor  ;  and,  though  wrapped  up  in  their  dead  and 
stony  sleep  of  ages,  seem  not  only  the  most  strange,  but 
also  the  most  terrible  things  on  which  his  e3'e  ever  rested. 
Enormous  jaws,  bristling  with  pointed  teeth,  gape  horrid  in 
the  stone,  under  staring  e5'e-sockets  a  full  foot  in  diameter. 
Necks  that  half  equal  in  length  the  enth'e  body  of  the  boa- 
constrictor  stretch  out  from  bodies  mounted  on  fins  like 
those  of  a  fish,  and  furnished  with  tails  somewhat  resem- 
bling those  of  the  mammals.  Here  we  see  a  winged 
dragon,  that,  armed  with  sharp  teeth  and  strong  claws, 


MOSAIC    AND     GEOLOGICAL. 


1G7 


had  careered  through  the  air  on  leathern  wings  like  those 
of  a  bat ;  there  an  enormous  crocodilian  whale,  that, 
mounted  on  many -jointed  paddles,  had  traversed,  in  quest 
of  pre}",  the  green  depths  of  the  sea ;  yonder  a  herbivor- 
ous lizard,  with  a  horn  lilve  that  of  the  rhinoceros  projecting 
from  its  snout,  and  that,  when  it  browsed  amid  the  dank 
meadows  of  the  Wealden,  must  have  stood  about  twelve 
feet  high.  All  is  enormous,  monstrous,  vast,  amid  the 
creeping  and  tlying  things  and  the  great  sea  monsters  of 
this  division  of  the  galler}^ 

We  pass  on  into  the  third  and  lower  division,  and  an 
entirely  different  class  of  existences  now  catch  the  e3'e. 
The  huge  mastodon,  with  his  enormous  length  of  body,  and 

Fig.  92, 


MEGATHERIUM  CUVIERI. 


his  tusks  projecting  from  both  upper  and  under  jaw,  stands 
erect  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  —  a  giant  skeleton.  We 
see  beside  him  the  great  bones  of  the  megatherium,  —  thigh 
bones  eleven  inches  in  diameter,  and  claw-armed  toes  more 
than  two  feet  in  length.  There,  too,  ranged  species  be3'ond 
species,  are  the  extinct  elephants  ;  and  there  the  ponderous 
skull  of  the  dinotherium,  with  the  bent  tusks  in  iU>  lower 


lv'?8  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

jaw,  that  give  to  it  the  appearance  of  a  great  pickaxe,  and  that 
must  have  dug  deepl}-  of  old  amid  the  liliaceous  roots  and 
bulbs  of  the  Tertiary  lakes  and  rivers.     There  also  are  the 

Fisr.  03. 


SKULL  OF  DIXOTHERICM  GIGAST£DU. 

(Miocene.) 

massive  heads  and  spreading  horn-cores  of  the  Bos  primi- 
gcnins,  and  the  large  bones  and  broad  plank-like  horns  of 
the  great  Irish  elk.  And  there  too,  in  the  same  apartment, 
but  leaning  against  its  further  wall, — last,  as  most  recent, 
of  all  the  objects  of  ^vender  in  that  great  galler3-,  —  is  the 
famous  human  skeleton  of  Guadaloupe,  standing  out  in  bold 
relief  from  its  slab  of  graj-  limestone.  It  occurs  in  the 
series,  just  as  the  series  closes,  a  little  bej-ond  the  mastodon 
and  the  mammoths  ;  and,  in  its  strange  character  as  a  fossil 
man,  attracts  the  attention  scarce  less  powerfully  than  the 
gi-eat  Palaeozoic  plants,  the  great  Secondarj'  reptiles,  or  the 
great  Tertiary  mammals. 

I  last  passed  through  this  wondrous  gallery  at  the  time 
when  the  attraction  of  the  Great  Exhibition  had  filled  Lon- 
don with  curious  visitors  from  all  parts  of  the  empire  ;  and 
a  group  of  intelligent  mechanics,  fresh  from  some  manufac- 
turing town  of  the  midland  countries,  were  sauntering  on 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  1G9 

thi'ongli  its  chambers  immediately  before  me.  They  stood 
amazed  beneath  the  dragons  of  the  Oolite  and  Lias  ;  and, 
with  more  than  the  admiration  and  wonder  of  the  disciples 
of  old  when  contemplating  the  huge  stones  of  the  Temple, 
they  turned  to  say,  in  almost  the  old  words,  "Lo !  master, 
what  manner  of  great  beasts  are  these?  "  "  These  are,"  I 
replied,  "  the  sea  monsters  and  creeping  things  of  the  second 
gi-eat  period  of  organic  existence."  The  reply  seemed  satis- 
factory, and  we  passed  on  together  to  the  terminal  apart- 
ments of  the  range  appropriated  to  the  Tertiary  organisms. 
And  there,  before  the  enormous  mammals,  the  mechanics 
again  stood  in  wonder,  and  turned  to  inquire.  Anticipating 
the  query,  I  said,  "  And  these  are  the  huge  beasts  of  the 
earth,  and  the  cattle  of  the  third  great  period  of  organic 
existence  ;  and  3'onder,  in  the  same  apartment,  you  see,  but 
at  its  further  end,  is  the  famous  fossil  man  of  Guadaloupe, 
locked  up  by  the  petrifactive  agencies  in  a  slab  of  lime- 
stone." The  mechanics  again  seemed  satisfied.  And,  of 
course,  had  I  encountered  them  in  the  first  chamber  of  the 
suite,  and  had  they  questioned  me  respecting  the  organisms 
with  which  it  is  occupied,  I  would  have  told  them  that  they 
were  the  remains  of  the  herbs  and  trees  of  the  first  great 
period  of  organic  existence.  But  in  the  chamber  of  the 
mammals  we  parted,  and  I  saw  them  no  more. 

There  could  not  be  a  simpler  incident.  And  3'et,  rightly 
apprehended,  it  reads  its  lesson.  You  have  all  visited  the 
scene  of  it,  and  must  all  have  been  struck  by  the  thiee 
salient  points,  if  I  may  so  speak,  by  which  that  noble  gallery 
la3-s  strongest  hold  of  the  memor}-,  and  most  powerfully 
impresses  the  imagination,  —  by  its  gigantic  plants  of  the 
first  period  (imperfectly  as  these  are  represented  in  the  col- 
lection), by  its  strange  misproportioned  sea  monsters  and 
creeping  things  of  the  second,  and  by  its  huge  mammals  of 
the  third.  Amid  man}-  thousand  various  objects,  and  a  per- 
plexing multiplicity  of  detail,  which  it  would  require  the 


170  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

patient  study  of  3'ears  even  partial!}'  to  classify  and  know, 
these  are  the  great  prominent  features  of  the  galler}',  that 
involuntarily,  on  the  part  of  the  visitor,  force  themselves  on 
his  attention.  They  at  once  pressed  themselves  on  the 
fittention  of  the  intelligent  though  unscientific  mechanics, 
and,  I  doubt  not,  still  dwell  vividly  in  their  recollections  ; 
and  I  now  ask  j-ou,  when  3'ou  again  visit  the  national 
museum,  and  verify  the  fact  of  the  great  prominence  of 
these  classes  of  objects,  to  bear  in  mind,  that  the  gallery  in 
which  they  occur  represents,  both  in  the  order  and  char- 
aclei  of  its  contents,  the  course  of  creation.  I  ask  3-ou  to 
remember  that,  had  there  been  human  eyes  on  earth  during 
the  PalaBOzoic,  Secondarj',  and  Tertiary  periods,  they  would 
have  been  filled  in  succession  by  the  great  plants,  the  great 
reptiles,  and  the  great  mammals,  just  as  those  of  tho 
mechanics  were  filled  by  them  in  the  museum.  As  the  sun 
and  moon,  when  they  first  became  visible  in  the  heavens, 
would  have  seemed  to  human  eyes — had  there  been  human 
eyes  to  see  —  not  only  the  greatest  of  the  celestial  lights, 
but  peculiarly  the  prominent  objects  of  the  epoch  in  which 
they  appeared,  so  would  these  plants,  reptiles,  and  mam- 
mals, have  seemed  in  succession  the  prominent  objects  of  the 
several  epochs  in  which  they  appeared.  And,  asking  the 
geologist  to  sa}'  whether  my  replies  to  the  mechanics  were 
not,  with  all  their  simplicit}',  true  to  geological  fact,  and 
the  theologian  to  say  Avhether  the  statements  which  they 
embodied  were  not,  with  all  their  geolog}^,  true  to  the  scrip- 
tural narrative,  I  ask  farther,  whether  (of  course,  making 
due  allowance  for  the  laxity  of  the  terms  botanic  and  zoo- 
logical of  a  primitive  language  unadapted  to  the  niceties  of 
botanic  or  zoologic  science)  the  Mosaic  account  of  creation 
could  be  rendered  more  essentially  true,  than  we  actually 
find  it,  to  the  history  of  creation  geologicallj^  ascertained. 
If,  taking  the  Mosaic  days  as  equivalent  to  lengthened 
periods,  we  hold  that,  in  giving  their  brief  history,  the 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  IJJ 

inspired  writer  seized  on  but  those  salient  points  that,  like 
the  two  great  lights  of  the  day  and  night,  would  haA'c 
arrested  most  powerfull}-,  during  these  periods,  a  human 
e3'e,  we  shall  find  the  harmony  of  the  two  records  complete. 
In  j-our  visit  to  the  museum,! would  j-et  further  ask  you  to 
mark  ^he  place  of  the  human  skeleton  in  the  great  gallery. 
It  stands  —  at  least  it  stood  onl}'  a  few  years  ago  —  in  the 
same  apartment  with  the  hugemammifers.  And  it  is  sureh' 
wortJi}'  of  remark,  that  while  in  both  the  sacred  and  geo- 
logic records  a  strongly  defined  line  separates  between  the 
period  of  plants  and  the  succeeding  periods  of  reptiles,  and 
again  between  the  period  of  reptiles  and  the  succeeding 
period  of  mammals,  no  line  in  either  record  separates 
betwetn  this  period  of  mammals  and  the  Imman  period. 
Man  came  into  being  as  the  lastborn  of  creation,  just  ere 
the  close  of  that  sixth  day  —  the  third  and  terminal  period 
of  organic  creation  —  to  which  the  great  mammals  belong. 
Let  me  yet  further  remark,  that  in  each  of  these  three 
great  periods  we  find,  with  respect  to  the  classes  of  exist- 
ences, vegetable  or  animal,  by  which  the}' were  most  promi- 
nently characterized,  certain  well  marked  culminating  points 
together,  if  I  may  so  express  m3'self,  —  twilight  periods  of 
morning  dawn  and  evening  decline.  The  plants  of  the 
earlier  and  terminal  sj'stems  of  the  PaLoeozoic  division  arc 
few  and  small :  it  was  onl}'  during  the  protracted  eons  of 
tlie  Carboniferous  period  that  the}-  received  their  amazing 
development,  unequalled  in  any  previous  succeeding  time.* 

*  It  will  te  seen  that  there  is  no  attempt  made  in  the  lecture  to  rep- 
resent the  great  Palajozoiu  division  as  characterized  tliroiigliout  its 
entire  extent  by  a  luxuriant  flora.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  expressly 
stated  here,  that  the  "plants  of  its  earlier  and  terminal  formations 
(i.  e.  those  of  the  Silurian,  Old  Eed,  and  Permian  Systems)  were/ew 
and  small,"  and  that  "  it  was  only  during  the  protracted  cons  of  the 
carlcniferous  period  that  they  received  their  amazing  development, 
unequalled  in  any  previous  or  succeeding  time."  Being  thus  express 
in  my  limitation,  I  think  I  have  just  cause  of  coinphunt  against  any 


172  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

In  like  manner,  in  the  earlier  or  Triassic  deposits  of  the 
Secondary  division,  the  reptilian  remains  are  comparatively 
inconsiderable  ;  and  they  are  almost  equally  so  in  its  Cre- 
taceous or  later  deposits.     It  was  during  those  middle  ages 

one  who  represents  me  as  unfairly  laboring,  in  this  very  composition, 
to  make  it  be  believed  that  the  whole  Palaeozoic  period  was  character- 
ized by  a  gorgeous  flora ;  and  as  thus  sophistically  generalizing  in  the 
first  instance,  in  order  to  make  a  fallacious  use  of  the  generalization 
in  the  second,  with  the  intention  of  misleading  non-geologic  readers. 
Such,  however,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  following  extracts  from  the 
"Proceedings  of  tlie  Academy  of  Natural  Science  at  Philadelphia,"  is 
the  charge  preferred  against  me  by  a  citizen  of  the  United  States. 

"  Mr.  William  Parker  Foulke  asked  the  attention  of  the  Society  to 
a  lecture  by  Mr.  Hugh  Miller,  recently  republished  in  the  United  States 
under  the  title  of  '  The  Two  Records,  Mosaic  and  Geological,'  and 
made  some  remarks  upon  the  importance  of  maintaining  a  careful 

scrutiny  of  the  logic  of  the  natural  sciences Mr.  Miller 

teaches  that,  in  tlie  attempt  to  reconcile  tbe  two  '  records,'  there  are 
only  three  periods  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  geologist,  viz.  '  the 
period  of  plants;  the  period  of  great  sea  monsters  and  creeping 
things;  and  tlie  period  of  cattle  and  beasts  of  the  earth  ; '  and  that  the 
first  of  tliese  periods  is  represented  by  the  rocks  grouped  under  the 
term  FalcEozoic,  and  is  distinguished  from  tlie  Secondary  and  Ter- 
tiary chiefly  by  its  gorgeous  flora ;  and  that  the  geological  evidence  is 
so  complete  as  to  be  patent  to  all,  that  tlie  first  great  period  of  organ- 
ized being  was,  as  described  in  the  Mosaic  record,  peculiarly  a  period 
of  herbs  and  trees,  yielding  seed  after  their  kind.  Tlie  general  reader, 
not  familiar  with  tlie  details  of  geological  arrangement,  could  not  fail 
to  infer  from  such  a  statement,  used  for  such  a  purpose,  that  the 
Palaeozoic  roclcs  are  regarded  by  geologists  as  forming  one  group  rep- 
resentative of  one  period,  which  can  properly  be  said  to  be  distin- 
guished as  a  whole  by  its  gorgeous  flora ;  and  that  it  is  properly  so 
distinguished  for  the  argument  in  question.  It  was  famihar  to  the 
Academy,  as  well  as  to  Mr.  Miller,  that  from  the  carboniferous  rocks 
downward  (backward  in  order  of  time),  there  have  been  discriminated 
a  large  number  of  periods,  diSering  from  one  another  in  mineral  and 
in  organic  remains ;  and  that  the  proportion  of  tlie  carboniferous  era 
to  the  whole  series  is  small,  whether  we  regard  the  thickness  of  its 
deposits  or  its  conjectural  chronology.  It  is  ordy  of  tlus  carbonifer- 
ous  era,  the  latest  of  this  series,  that  the  author's  remarks  could  be 
true ;  and  even  of  tliis,  if  taken  for  the  entire  surfice  of  the  earth,  it 
could  not  be  truly  asserted  that  '  the  evidence  is  so  complete  as  to  be 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  173 

of  the  division,  represented  b}^  its  Liassic,  Oolitic,  and 
Wealden  formations,  tliattlie  class  existed  in  tliat  abundance 
which  rendered  it  so  peculiarly,  above  every  other  age,  an 
age  of  creeping  things  and  great  sea  monsters.     And  so 

patent  to  all,'  tliat  the  quantity  of  its  vegetable  products  distinguishes 
it  from  the  earth's  surface  during  the  era  in  which  we  live.  To  con- 
found by  implication  all  the  periods  termed  Palaeozoic,  so  as  to  apply 
to  them  as  a  whole  what  could  be  true,  if  at  all,  only  of  the  carbon- 
iferous period,  is  a  fallacious  use  of  a  generalization  made  for  a  pur- 
pose,  and  upon  a  principle  not  properly  available  for  the  writer's 
argument,"  &c.     So  far  the  "  Proceedings  "  of  the  Academy. 

This,  surely,  is  very  much  the  reverse  of  fair.  I,  however,  refer 
the  matter,  without  note  or  comment  (so  far  at  least  as  it  involves  the 
question  whether  Mr.  Foulke  has  not,  in  the  face  of  the  most  express 
statement  on  my  part,  wholly  misrepresented  mo),  to  the  judgment 
of  candid  and  intelligent  readers  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 

I  know  not  that  I  should  recognize  Mr.  Foulke  as  entitled,  after 
such  a  display,  to  be  dealt  with  simply  as  the  member  of  a  learned 
society  who  differs  from  me  on  a  scientific  question ;  nor  does  his 
reference  to  the  "carboniferous  era"  as  "the  latest  of  the  "  Pala;- 
ozoic  "  series,"  and  his  apparent  unacquaintance  with  that  Permian 
period,  in  reality  the  terminal  one  of  the  division  during  which  the 
Palffiozoic  forms  seem  to  have  gradually  died  awa^^  in  order  to  give 
place  to  those  of  the  Secondary  division,  inspire  any  very  high  respect 
for  his  acquirements  as  a  geologist.  Waiving,  however,  the  legitimacy 
of  his  claim,  I  may  be  permitted  to  repeat,  for  the  further  informa- 
tion of  the  non-geological  reader,  that  the  carboniferous  formations, 
wherever  iliey  have  yet  been  detected,  justify,  in  the  amazing  abun- 
dance of  their  carbonized  vegetable  organisms,  the  name  which  they 
bear.  Mr.  Foulke,  in  three  short  sentences,  uses  the  terms  "  carbo- 
niferous era,"  "  carboniferous  rocks,"  "carboniferous  period,"  four 
several  times;  and  these  terms  are  derived  from  the  predominating 
amount  of  carbon  (elaborated  of  old  by  the  plants  of  the  period) 
which  occur  in  its  several  formations.  The  very  language  which  he 
has  to  employ  is  of  itself  a  confirmation  of  the  statement  which  he 
challenges.  For  so  "patent"  is  this  carboniferous  character  of  the 
system,  that  it  has  given  to  it  its  universally  accepted  designation,  — 
the  verbal  sign  by  which  it  is  represented  wherever  it  is  known.  Mr. 
F.  states,  that  "  if  taken  for  the  entire  surface  of  the  eartli,"  it  cannot 
be  truly  asserted  that  tlie  carboniferous  flora  preponderated  over  that 
of  the  present  time,  or,  at  least,  that  its  preponderance  could  not  be 
regarded  as  "  patent  to  all."     The  statement  admits  of  so  many  dif- 


174  l^nS    TWO    RECORDS, 

also,  in  the  Tertiarj',  regarded  as  but  an  earl}'  portion  of 
the  human  division,  there  was  a  period  of  increase  and 
diminution,  —  a  morning  and  evening  of  mammalian  life. 
The  mammals  of    its  early  Eocene   ages  -were   compara- 

ferent  meanings,  that  I  know  not  whether  I  shall  succeed  in  replying 
to  the  special  meaning  intended  by  Mr.  Foulke.  There  are  no  doubt 
carboniferous  deposits  on  the  earth's  surface  still  unknown  to  the 
geologist,  the  evidence  of  which  on  tlie  point  must  be  regarded,  in 
consequence,  not  as  "  patent  to  all,"  but  as  nil.  They  are  witnesses 
absent  from  court,  whose  testimony  has  not  yet  been  tendered.  But 
equally  certain  it  is,  I  repeat,  that  wherever  carboniferous  forniiitions 
have  been  discovered  and  examined,  tlioy  have  been  found  to  bear 
the  unique  characteristic  to  which  the  system  owes  its  name,  —  they 
have  been  found  charged  with  the  carbon,  existing  usually  as  great 
beds  of  coal,  which  was  elaborated  of  old  by  its  unrivalled  flora  from 
the  elements.  And  as  this  evidence  is  certain  and  positive,  no  one 
would  be  entitled  to  set  off  against  it,  as  of  equal  weight,  the  merely 
negative  evidence  of  some  one  or  two  deposits  of  the  carboniferous 
age  that  did  not  bear  the  carboniferous  character,  even  were  such 
known  to  exist;  far  less  is  any  one  entitled  to  set  off  against  it  the 
possibly  negative  evidence  of  deposits  of  the  carboniferous  age  not 
yet  discovered  nor  examined;  for  that  would  be  simply  to  set  off 
against  good  positive  evidence,  what  is  no  evidence  at  all.  It  would 
be  to  set  off  the  possible  evidence  of  the  absent  witnesses,  not  yet 
precognosced  in  the  case,  against  the  express  declarations  of  the  wit- 
nesses already  examined,  and  strong  on  the  positive  side. 

Surely  an  American,  before  appealing,  in  a  question  of  this  kind, 
to  the  bare  possibility  of  the  existence  somewhere  or  other  of  barely 
negative  evidence,  ought  to  have  betliought  him  of  the  very  extraor- 
dinary positive  evidence  furnished  by  tlie  carboniferous  deposits  of  his 
own  great  country.  Tlie  coal  fields  of  Britain  and  the  European  con- 
tinent h.ad  been  wrought  for  ages  ere  those  of  North  America  were 
known,  and  for  ages  more  after  it  had  been  but  ascertained  that  the 
New,  like  the  Old  World,  has  its  Coal  Measures.  And  during  the 
latter  period  the  argument  oiMv.  Foulke  might  have  been  employed, 
just  as  now,  and  some  member  of  a  learned  society  miglit  have  urged 
that,  though  the  coal  fields  of  Europe  bore  evidence  to  the  former 
existence  of  a  singularly  luxuriant  flora,  beyond  comparison  more 
vast  than  the  European  one  of  the  present  day,  the  same  could  not 
be  predicated  of  the  American  coal  fields,  whose  carbonized  remains 
might  be  found  representative  of  a  flora  which  iiad  been  at  least  not 
more  largely  developed  than  that  existing  American  flora  to  which 


MOSAIC    AND     GEOLOGICAL.  175 

tivelj  small  in  bulk  and  low  in  standing ;  in  its  conclud- 
ing ages,  too,  immediately  ere  the  appearance  of  man, 
or  just  as  he  had  appeared,  they  exhibited,  both  in  size  and 
number,  a  reduced  and  less  imposing  aspect.  It  was  chiefl}- 
in  its  middle  and  latter,  or  Miocene,  Pliocene,  and  Pleisto- 
cene ages,  that  the  myriads  of  its  linger  giants,  —  its  dino- 
theria,  mastodons,  and  mammoths,  —  cumbered  the  soil.  I, 
of  course,  restrict  my  remarlcs  to  the  three  periods  of 
organic  life,  and  have  not  inquired  whether  aught  analogous 
lo  these  mornings  and  evenings  of  increase  and  diminution 
need  be  sought  after  in  au}'  of  the  others. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  geological  facts  which  lead  me  to 
believe  that  the  days  of  the  Mosaic  account  were  great 
periods,  not  natural  days ;  and  be  it  remembered,  that 
between  the  scheme  of  lengthened  periods  and  the  scheme 
of  a  merely  local  chaos,  which  existed  no  one  knows  how, 
and  of  a  merely  local  creation,  which  had  its  scene  no  one 
knows  where,  geological  science  leaves  us  now  no  choice 
whatever.     It  has  been  urged,  however,  that  this  scheme 

the  great  western  forests  belong.  Now,  however,  the  time  for  any 
such  argument  has  gone  by;  the  American  coalfields  have  been  care- 
fully explored;  and  what  is  the  result?  The  geologist  has  come  to 
know,  that  even  the  mighty  forests  of  America  are  inconsiderable, 
compared  with  its  deposits  of  coul ;  nay,  tliat  all  its  forests  gathered 
into  one  heap  would  fail  to  iurnish  the  materials  of  a  single  coal  seam 
equal  to  that  of  Pittsburg ;  and  that  centuries  after  all  its  thick  woods 
shall  have  disappeared  before  the  axe,  and  it  shall  have  come  to  pre- 
sent the  comparatively  bare,  unwooded  aspect  of  tlie  long  civilized 
countries  of  Southern  Europe,  it  will  continue  to  derive  the  elements 
of  its  commercial  greatness,  and  the  cheerful  blaze  of  its  many  mil- 
lioug  of  domestic  hearths,  from  the  unprecedentedly  luxurious  flora  of 
the  old  carboniferous  ages.  Truly,  very  wonderful  are  the  coal  fields 
of  Northern  America !  If  geologists  inferred,  as  they  well  might,  that 
the  extinct  flora  which  had  originated  the  European  coal  vastly  out- 
rivalled  in  luxuriance  that  of  the  existing  time,  \\  liat  shall  be  said  of 
that  flora  of  the  same  age  which  originated  the  coal  deposits  of  Nova 
Scotia  and  the  United  States,  — deposits  tiventij  times  as  great  as  all 
those  of  all  Europe  put  together  1 


176  THE    TWO    RECORDS, 

of  periods  is  irreconcilable  with  that  Divine  "  reason  "  for 
the  institution  of  the  Sabbath  which  he  who  appointed  the 
day  of  old  has,  in  his  goodness,  vouchsafed  to  man.     I  have 
failed  to  see  any  force  in  the  objection.     God  the  Creator 
who  wrought  during  six  periods,  rested  during  the  seventh 
period ;    and  as  we  have   no  evidence  whatever  that  he 
recommenced  his  work  of  creation,  —  as,  on  the  contrar}^, 
man  seems  to  be  the  last  formed  of  creatures, — God  may 
be  resting  still.     The  presumption  is  strong  that  his  Sab- 
bath is  an  extended  period,  not  a  natural  day,  and  that 
the  work  of  Redemption  is  his  Sabbath  day's  work.     And 
so  I  cannot  see  that  it  in  the  least  interferes  with  the  integ- 
rity of  the  reason  rendered  to  read  it  as  follows  :  —  "Work 
during  six  periods,  and  rest  on  the  seventh ;  for  in  six 
periods  the  Lord  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  and  on 
the  seventh  period  He  rested.     The  Divine  periods  may 
have  been  very  great, — the  human  periods  very  small; 
just  as  a  vast  continent  or  the  huge  earth  itself  is  very 
great,  and  a  map  or  geographical  globe  ver^'  small.     But 
if  in  the  map  or  globe  the  proportions  be  faithfull}-  main- 
tained, and  the  scale,  though  a  minute  one,  be  true  in  all  its 
parts  and  applications,  we  pronounce  the  map  or  globe, 
notwithstanding  the  smallness  of  its  size,  a,  faithful  cop}'. 
Were  man's  Sabbaths  to  be  kept  as  enjoined,  and  in  the 
Divine  proportions,  it   would   scarcely  interfere  with  the 
logic  of  the  "  reason  annexed  to  the  fourth  commandment," 
though  in  this  matter,  as  in  all  others  in  which  man  can  be 
an  imitator  of  God,  the  imitation  should  be  a  miniature  one. 
The  work  of  Redemption  ma}-,  I  repeat,  be  the  work 
of  God's  Sabbath  day.     What,  I  ask,  viewed  as  a  whole,  is 
the  prominent  characteristic  of  geologic  histor}-,  or  of  that 
corresponding  history  of  creation  ^vhich  forms  the  grandl}' 
fashioned  vestibule  of  the  sacred  volume  ?     Of  both  alike 
the  leading  characteristic  is  progress.     In  both  alike  do  we 
find  an  upward  progress  from  dead  matter  to  the  humbler 


MOSAIC    AND    GEOLOGICAL.  177 

forms  of  vitality,  and  from  thence  to  the  higher.     And 
after  great  cattle  and  beasts  of  the  earth  had,  in  due  order, 
succeeded   inanimate  plants,   sea    monsters,   and  moving 
creatures  that  had  life,  the  moral  agent,  man,  enters  upon 
the  scene.     Previous   to  his  appearance  on    earth,    each 
succeeding  elevation  in  the  long  upward  march  had  been 
a  result  of  creation.     The  creative  fiat  went  forth,  and  dead 
matter  came  into  existence.     The  creative  fiat  went  forth, 
and  plants,  with  the  lower  animal  forms,  came  into  exist- 
ence.      The  creative  fiat  went  forth,  and  the  oviparous 
animals,  —  bhxls  and  reptiles,  —  came  into  existence.     The 
creative  fiat  went  forth,  and  the  mammiferous  animals,  — 
cattle  and  beasts    of   the    earth,  —  came    into  existence. 
And,  finall}',  last  in  the  series,  the  creative  fiat  went  forth, 
and  responsible,  immortal  man,  came  into  existence.     But 
has  the  course  of  progress  come,  in  consequence,  to  a  close  ? 
No.     God's  work   of  elevating,  raising,  heightening, — of 
mailing  the   high   in  due  progression  succeed  the  low, — 
still  goes  on.     But  man's  responsibility,  his  immortality,  his 
God-implanted  instincts  respecting  an  eternal  future,  forbid 
that  that  work  of  elevation  and  progress  should  be,  as  in 
all  the  other  instances,  a  work  of  creation.      To  create 
would  be  to  supersede.     God's   work  of  elevation  now  is 
the  work  of  fitting  and  preparing  peccable,  imperfect  man 
for  a  perfect,  impeccable,  future  state.     God's  seventh  daj-'s 
work  is  the  work  of  Redemption.     And,  read  in  this  light, 
his  reason    vouchsafed  to  man  for  the  institution  of  the 
•Sabbath  is  found  to  yield  a  meaning  of  peculiar  breadth 
and  emphasis.     God,  it  seems  to  saj',  rests  on  Ids  Sabbath 
fi'ora  his  creative  labors,  in  order  that  by  his  Sabbath  day's 
work  he  may  save  and  elevate  you.     Rest  ye  also  on  your 
Sabbaths,  that  through  3'our  co-operation  with  him  in  this 
great  work  ye  may   be  elevated  and  saved.     Made  origi- 
nally in  the  image  of  God,  let  God  be  your  pattern  and 


178  THE    TWO    RECORDS,    ETC. 

example.  Engaged  in  3'our  material  and  temporal  employ- 
ments, labor  in  the  proportions  in  which  he  labored ;  but, 
in  order  that  you  may  enjoy  an  eternal  future  with  him, 
rest  also  in  the  proportions  in  which  he  rests. 

One  other  remark  ere  I  conclude.  In  the  history  of  the 
earth  which  we  inhabit,  molluscs,  fishes,  reptiles,  mammals, 
had  each  in  succession  their  periods  of  vast  duration ;  and 
then  the  human  period  began,  —  the  period  of  a  fellow 
worker  with  God,  created  in  God's  own  image.  What  is 
to  be  the  next  advance  ?  Is  there  to  be  merely  a  repetition 
of  the  past  ?  —  an  introduction  a  second  time  of  man 
made  in  the  image  of  God?  No.  The  geologist,  in  those 
tables  of  stone  which  form  his  records,  finds  no  example  of 
dynasties  once  passed  away  again  returning.  There  has 
been  no  repetition  of  the  dynasty  of  the  fish,  of  the  reptile, 
of  the  mammal.  The  d3nasty  of  the  future  is  to  have 
glorified  man  for  its  inhabitant ;  but  it  is  to  be  the  dynasty 
—  '■'■  the  kingdovi"  —  not  of  glorified  man  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  but  of  God  himself  in  the  form  of  man.  In 
the  doctrine  of  the  two  conjoined  natures,  human  and 
Divine,  and  in  the  further  doctrine  tliat  the  terminal 
dynasty  is  to  be  peculiarly  the  dynasty  of  Him  in  whom 
the  natures  are  united,  we  find  that  required  progression 
beyond  which  progress  cannot  go.  We  find  the  point  of 
elevation  never  to  be  exceeded  meetly  coincident  with  the 
final  period  never  to  be  terminated, — the  infinite  in  height 
harmoniously  associated  with  the  eternal  in  duration. 
Creation  and  the  Creator  meet  at  one  point,  and  in  one 
person.  The  long  ascending  line  from  dead  matter  to  man 
has  been  a  progress  Godwards,  — not  an  asymptotical  prog- 
ress, but  destined  from  the  beginning  to  furnish  a  point  of 
union  ;  and  occupying  that  point  as  true  God  and  true  man, 

as  Creator   and   created, — we  recognize  the   adorable 

Monarch  of  all  the  future  ! 


LECTURE    FOURTH. 

THE  MOSAIC  VISION  OF  CREATION. 

The  history  of  creation  is  introduced  into  the  "  Paradise 
Lost "  as  a  piece  of  naiTative,  and  forms  one  of  the  two 
great  episodes  of  the  poem.  Milton  represents  the  com- 
mon father  of  the  race  as  "  led  on  "  by  a  desu-e  to  know 

"  What  within  Eden  or  without  was  done 
Before  his  memory; 

and  straightway  Raphael,  "  the  affable  archangel,"  in  com- 
pliance with  the  wish,  enters  into  a  description  of  the  six 
days'  work  of  the  Divine  Creator,  —  a  description  in  which, 
as  Addison  well  remarks,  "  the  whole  energy  of  our  tongue 
is  employed,  and  the  several  great  scenes  of  creation  rise 
up  to  view,  one  after  another,  in  such  a  manner,  that  the 
reader  seems  present  at  this  wonderful  work,  and  to  assist 
among  the  choirs  of  angels  who  are  spectators  of  it."  In 
the  other  great  episode  of  the  poem,  —  that  in  which  the 
more  prominent  changes  which  were  to  happen  in  after  time 
upon  the  earth  are  made  to  pass  before  Adam,  he  is  repre- 
sented as  carried  by  Michael  to  the  top  ofa  great  mountain, 
lofty  as  that  on  which  in  a  long  posterior  age  the  Tempter 
placed  our  Saviour,  and  where  the  coming  events  are 
described  as  rising  up  in  vision  before  him.  In  the  earlier 
episode,  as  in  those  of  the  Odyssey  and  -^neld,  in  which 
heroes  relate  in  the  courts  of  princes  the  story  of  their 
adventures,  there  is  but  narrative  and  description ;  in  the 


180  THE    MOSAIC    VISION 

later,  a  series  of  magnificent  pictures,  that  form  and  then 
dissolve  before  the  spectator,  and  comprise,  in  their  vivid 
tints  and  pregnant  outlines,  the  future  history  of  a  world. 
And  one  of  these  two  episodes, —  that  which  relates  to  the 
creation  of  all  things,  —  must  have  as  certainly  had  a  place 
in  human  historj^  as  in  the  master  epic  of  England.  Man 
would  have  forever  remained  ignorant  of  many  of  those 
events  related  in  the  opening  chapters  of  Scripture,  which 
took  place  ere  there  was  a  human  eye  to  witness,  or  a  human 
memory  to  record,  had  he  not  been  permitted,  like  Adam 
of  old,  to  hold  intercourse  with  the  intelligences  that  had 
preceded  him  in  creation,  or  with  the  great  Creator  himself, 
the  Author  of  tliem  all ;  and  the  question  has  been  asked 
of  late,  both  in  our  own  country  and  on  the  Continent, 
What  was  the  form  and  nature  of  the  revelation  by  which 
the  pre-Adamic  history  of  the  earth  and  heavens  was  origi- 
nally conveyed  to  man?  Was  it  conveyed,  like  the  sublime 
story  of  Raphael,  as  a  piece  of  narrative,  dictated,  mayhap, 
to  the  inspired  penman,  or  miraculously  borne  in  upon  his 
mind?  Or  was  it  convej-ed  by  a  succession  of  sublime 
visions  like  that  which  Michael  is  represented  as  calling 
up  before  Adam,  when,  purging  his  "  visual  nerves  with 
euphrasy  and  rue,"  he  enabled  him  to  see,  in  a  series  of 
scenes,  the  history  of  his  offspring  from  the  crime  of  Cain 
down  to  the  destruction  of  the  Old  World  by  a  flood? 
The  passages  in  which  the  history  of  creation  is  recorded 
give  no  intimation  whatever  of  their  own  history  ;  and  so 
we  are  left  to  balance  the  probabilities  regarding  the  mode 
and  form  in  which  they  were  originall^^  revealed,  and  to 
found  our  ultimate  conclusions  respecting  them  on  evidence, 
not  direct,  but  circumstantial. 

The  Continental  writers  on  this  curious  subject  may  be 
regarded  as  not  inadequately  represented  by  Dr.  J.  H. 
Kurtz,  Professor  of  Theology  at  Dorpat,  —  one  of  the  many 


OF    CREATION.  181 

ingenious  biblical  scholars  of  modern  Germany.  We  find 
him  stating  the  question,  in  his  Bibel  unci  Astronomie 
(second  edition,  1849),  with  great  precision  and  clearness, 
but  in  a  manner,  so  far  at  least  as  the  form  of  his  thinking 
is  concerned,  strikingly  characteristic  of  what  may  be  termed 
the  theological  fashion  of  his  country  in  the  present  day. 
"  The  source  of  all  human  history,"  he  says,  "  is  eye-witness^ 
be  it  that  of  the  reporter,  or  of  another  whose  account  has 
been  handed  down.  Only  what  man  has  himself  seen  or 
experienced  can  be  the  subject  of  man's  historical  composi- 
tions. So  that  history,  so  far  as  man  can  write  it,  can  begin 
with  but  the  point  at  which  he  has  entered  into  conscious 
existence,  and  end  with  the  moment  that  constitutes  the 
jDresent  time.  Beyond  these  points,  hoAvever,  lies  a  great 
l^rovince  of  historic  development,  existing  on  the  one  side 
as  the  Past,  on  the  other  side  as  the  Future.  For  Avhen 
man  begins  to  be  an  observer  or  actor  of  history,  he  him- 
self, and  the  whole  circumstantials  of  his  condition,  have 
already  come  historically  into  being.  Nor  does  the  flow  of 
development  stop  Avith  Avhat  is  his  present.  Millions  of 
influences  are  spinning  the  thread  still  on ;  but  no  one  can 
tell  what  the  compound  result  of  all  their  energies  is  to  be. 
Both  these  sorts  of  history,  then,  lie  beyond  the  region 
of  man's  knowledge,  which  is  shut  up  in  space  and  time, 
and  can  only  call  the  present  its  own.  It  is  God  alone  Avho, 
standing  beyond  and  above  space  and  time,  sees  backwards 
and  forwards  both  the  development  which  preceded  the  first 
present  of  men,  and  that  Avhich  will  succeed  this  our  latest 
lyresent.  Whatever  the  difference  of  the  two  kinds  of  his- 
tory may  be,  they  hold  the  same  position  in  relation  both  to 
the  principle  of  the  human  ignorance  and  the  princijjle  of 
the  human  knowledge.  The  principle  of  the  ignorance  is 
man's  condition  as  a  creature ;  the  j^rinciple  of  the  knowl- 
edge is  the  Divine  knowledge ;  and  the  medium  between 
16 


182  THE   MOSAIC   VISION 

ignorance  and  knowledge  is  objectively  Divine  revelation, 
and  subjectively  prophetic  vision  by  man,  in  which  he  beholds 
with  the  eye  of  the  mind  what  is  shut  and  hid  from  the  eye 
of  his  body."  From  these  premises  Dr.  Kurtz  goes  on  to 
argue  that  the  pre-Adamic  history  of  the  past  being  theologi- 
cally in  the  same  category  as  the  yet  undeveloped  history 
of  the  future,  that  record  of  its  leading  events  which  occurs 
in  the  Mosaic  narrative  is  simply  jy^ophecy  described  back- 
wards ;  and  that,  coming  under  the  prophetic  law,  it  ought 
of  consequence  to  be  subjected  to  the  prophetic  rule  of 
exposition.  There  are  some  very  ingenious  reasonings 
employed  in  fortifying  this  point ;  and,  after  quoting  from 
Eichhorn  a  passage  to  the  effect  that  the  opening  chapter  in 
Genesis  is  much  rather  a  creative  picture  than  a  creative 
history,  and  from  Ammon  to  the  effect  that  the  author  of 
it  evidently  takes  the  position  of  a  beholder  of  creation, 
the  learned  German  concludes  his  general  statement  by 
remarking,  that  the  scenes  of  the  chapter  are  prophetic 
tableaux,  each  containing  a  leading  phase  of  the  drama  of 
creation.  "  Before  the  eye  of  the  seer,"  he  says,  "  scene 
after  scene  is  unfolded,  until  at  length,  in  the  seven  of  them, 
the  course  of  creation,  in  its  main  momenta^  has  been  fully 
represented."  The  revelation  has  every  characteristic  of 
prophecy  by  vision,  —  j^rophecy  by  eye-witnessing ;  and 
may  be  perhaps  best  understood  by  regarding  it  simjDly  as 
an  exhibition  of  the  actual  phenomena  of  creation  presented 
to  the  mental  eye  of  the  prophet  under  the  ordinary  laws 
of  perspective,  and  truthfully  described  by  him  in  the 
simple  language  of  his  time. 

In  our  own  country  a  similar  view  has  been  taken  by  the 
author  of  a  singulai-ly  ingenious  little  work  which  issued 
about  tAvo  years  ago  from  the  press  of  Mr,  Constable  of 
Edinburgh,  "  The  Mosaic  Record  in  Harmony  with  Geol- 


OF    CREATION.  183 

Ogy."*  The  writer,  however,  exhibits,  in  dealing  with  his 
subject,  the  characteristic  sobriety  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
mind ;  and  while  the  leading  features  of  his  theory  agree 
essentially  with  those  of  the  Continental  one,  he  does  not 
press  it  so  for.  In  canvassing  the  fovtn  of  the  revelation 
made  to  Moses  in  the  opening  of  Genesis,  he  discusses  the 
nature  of  the  inspiration  enjoyed  by  that  great  prophet ; 
and  thus  retranslates  literally  from  the  Hebrew  the  passage 
in  which  the  Divine  Being  is  himself  introduced  as  speaking 
direct  on  the  point  in  the  controversy  raised  by  Aaron  and 
Miriam.  "  And  He  [the  Lord]  said,  hear  now  my  words  : 
If  he  [Moses]  were  your  prophet  [subordinate,  or  at  least 
not  superior,  to  the  prophetess  and  the  high  priest],  I, 
Jehovah,  in  the  vision  to  him  would  make  myself  known : 
in  the  dream  would  I  speak  to  him.  Not  so  my  servant 
Moses  [God's  prophet,  not  theirs] ;  in  all  my  house  faithful 


*  Such  is  also  the  view  taken  by  the  author  of  a  recently  published  work, 
"The  Genesis  of  the  Earth  and  of  Man."  "Christian  philosophers  have 
been  compelled  to  acknowledge,"  says  this  writer,  "  that  the  Mosaic  ac- 
count of  creation  is  only  reconcileable  with  demonstrated  facts,  by  its 
being  regarded  as  a  record  of  appearances ;  and  if  so,  to  vindicate  the 
truth  of  God,  we  must  consider  it,  so  far  as  the  acts  are  concerned,  as  the 
relation  of  a  revelation  to  the  siyht,  which  was  sufficient  for  all  its  purposes, 
rather  than  as  one  in  words ;  though  tlie  words  are  perfectly  true  as  de- 
scribing the  revelation  itself,  and  the  revelation  is  equally  true  as  showing 
man  the  principal  phenomena  which  he  would  have  seen  had  it  been  pos- 
sible for  him  to  be  a  witness  of  the  events.  Further,  if  we  view  the  nar- 
rative as  the  description  of  a  series  of  visions,  while  we  find  it  to  be 
perfectly  reconcileable  with  the  statement  in  other  parts  of  Scripture,  that 
in  six  days  the  Lord  made  heaven  and  earth,  we  remove,  with  other  dif- 
ficulties, the  only  strong  objection  to  the  opinion  of  those  who  regard  the 
'six  days'  as  periods  of  undefinable  duration,  and  who  may  even  believe 
that  we  are  now  in  the  '  seventh  day,'  —  the  day  of  rest  or  of  cessation 
from  the  work  of  creation.  Certainly,  '  the  day  of  God,'  and  '  the  day  of 
the  Lord,'  and  the  '  thousand  two  hundred  and  threescore  days,'  of  the 
Revelation  of  St.  John,  and  the  '  seventy  weeks  '  in  the  Prophecy  of  Daniel, 
are  not  to  be  understood  in  their  primary  and  natural  senses,"  &c.,  &c. 


184  THE   MOSAIC    VISION 

is  he.  Mouth  to  mouth  do  I  speak  to  him,  and  vision,  but 
not  in  dark  sj^eeches ;  and  Ukeness  of  Jehovah  he  beholds." 
Moses,  then,  was  favored  with  "visions  without  dark 
speeches." 

Now,  as  implied  in  the  passage  thus  retranslated,  there 
is  a  grand  distinction  between  symbohc  and  therefore  dark 
visions,  and  visions  not  symbolic  nor  dark.  Visions  ad- 
dressed, as  the  word  indicates,  to  the  eye,  may  be  obviously 
of  a  twofold  character,  —  they  may  be  either  darker  than 
words,  or  a  great  deal  clearer  than  words.  The  vision,  for 
instance,  of  future  monarchies  which  Daniel  saw  symbolized 
under  the  form  of  monstrous  animals  had  to  be  explained  in 
words ;  the  vision  of  Peter,  which  led  to  the  general  ad- 
mission of  the  Gentiles  into  the  Christian  Church,  had  also 
virtually  to  be  exjjlained  in  words ;  they  Avere  both  visions 
of  the  dark  class ;  and  revelation  abounds  in  such.  But 
there  were  also  visions  greatly  clearer  than  Avords.  Such, 
for  instance,  Avas  the  vision  of  the  secret  chamber  of  imagery, 
with  its  seventy  men  of  the  ancients  of  Israel  given  over  to 
idolatry,  Avhich  Avas  seen  by  the  prophet  as  he  sat  in  his 
own  house ;  and  the  vision  of  the  Avorshippers  of  the  sun  in 
the  inner  court  of  the  temple,  Avitnessed  from  Avhat  Avas 
naturally  the  same  impossible  point  of  vicAv ;  Avith  the 
vision  of  the  Jewish  Avomen  in  the  A\'estern  gate  "  weeping 
for  Thammuz,"  Avhen,  according  to  Milton's  noble  version, 

"The  love  tale 

Infected  Sion's  daughters  with  Hke  heat, 
Whose  wanton  passions  in  the  sacred  porch 
Ezekiel  saw,  when,  by  the  vision  led, 
His  eye  surveyed  the  dark  idolatries 
Of  alienated  Judah." 

Here,  then,  Avere  there  visions  of  scenes  actually  taking 
place  at  the  time,  Avhich,  greatly  clearer  than  any  merely 
verbal  description,  substituted  the  seeing  of  the  eye  for  the 


OF    CREATION.  185 

heavinjr  of  the  ear.  And  visions  of  this  latter  kind  were 
enjoyed,  argues  the  writer  of  this  ingenious  treatise,  by  the 
prophet  Moses. 

One  of  the  cases  adduced  may  be  best  given  in  the 
author's  own  words.  "  Moses,"  he  says,  "  received  direc- 
tions from  God  how  to  proceed  in  constructing  the  Taber- 
nacle and  its  sacred  furniture  ;  and  David  also  was  instructed 
how  the  Temple  of  Solomon  should  be  built.  Let  us  hear 
Scripture  regarding  the  nature  of  the  directions  given  to 
these  men :  — 

'  According  unto  the  appearance  [literally  sight,  vision] 
which  the  Lord  had  showed  unto  Moses,  so  he  made  the 
candlestick.''  —  (Num.  5 :  4.) 

'  The  whole  in  icriting^  by  the  hand  of  Jehovah  upon 
me,  he  taught ;  the  whole  works  of  the  pattern.'  —  (1 
Chron.  28:  10.) 

"  There  was  thus  a  ■writing  in  the  case  of  David ;  a  sight 
or  vision  of  the  thing  to  be  made  in  that  of  Moses." 

So  far  the  author  of  the  Treatise.  He  might  have  added 
further,  that  from  the  nature  of  things,  the  revelation  to 
Moses  in  this  instance  must  have  been  "  sight  or  vision," 
if,  indeed,  what  is  not  in  the  least  likely,  the  peculiar  archi- 
tecture and  style  of  ornament  used  in  the  Tabernacle  was 
not  a  borrowed  style,  already  employed  in  the  service  of 
idolatry.  An  old,  long  established  architecture  can  be 
adequately  described  by  speech  or  writing ;  a  new,  original 
architecture  can  be  adequately  described  only  by  pattern 
or  model,  that  is,  by  sight  or  vision.  Any  intelligent  cutter 
in  stone  or  carver  in  wood  could  furnish  to  order,  though 
the  order  were  merely  a  ved)al  one,  a  Corinthian  or  Ionic 
capital ;  but  no  such  mechanic,  however  skilful  or  ingenious, 
could  furnish  to  order,  if  unprovided  with  a  pattern  or 
drawing,  a  facsimile  of  one  of  the  ornately  sculptured 
capitals  of  Gloucester  Cathedral  or  York  Minster.  To 
16* 


186  THE   MOSAIC   VISION 

ensure  a  facsimile  in  any  snch  case,  the  originals,  or  rep- 
resentations of  them,  Avould  require  to  be  submitted  to  the 
eye, — not  merely  described  to  the  ear.  Nay,  from  the 
example  given  in  the  text,  —  that  of  the  golden  candle- 
stick, —  we  have  an  instance  furnished  in  recent  times  of 
the  utter  inadequacy  of  mere  description  for  the  purposes 
of  the  sculptor  or  artist.  Ever  since  copperplate  engrav- 
ings and  illustrated  Bibles  became  comparatively  common, 
representations  of  the  branched  candlestick  taken  from  the 
"written  description  have  been  common  also.  The  candle- 
stick on  the  arch  of  Titus,  though  not  deemed  an  exact 
representation  of  the  original  one  described  in  the  Penta- 
teuch, is  now  regarded,  —  correctly,  it  cannot  be  doubted, 
—  as  at  least  the  nearest  approximation  to  it  extant. 
Public  attention  Avas  first  drawn  to  this  interesting  piece  of 
sculpture  in  comparatively  modern  times ;  and  it  was  then 
found  that  all  the  previous  representations  taken  from  the 
written  description  were  widely  erroneous.  They  only 
served  to  show,  not  the  true  outlines  of  the  golden  candle- 
stick, but  merely  that  inadequacy  of  verbal  description  for 
artistic  purposes  which  must  have  rendered  visio7i,  or,  in 
other  words,  optical  representation,  imperative  in  the  case 
of  Moses.  Some  of  our  most  sober  minded  commentators 
take  virtually  the  same  view  of  this  necessity  of  A-ision  for 
ensuring  the  production  of  the  true  pattern  of  the  Tabei*- 
nacle.  "  The  Lord,"  says  Thomas  Scott,  "  not  only  directed 
Moses  by  words  how  to  buUd  the  Tabernacle  and  form  its 
sacred  furniture,  but  showed  him  a  model  exactly  rep- 
resenting the  form  of  every  part,  and  the  proportion  of 
each  to  all  the  rest."  There  must  have  been  clear  optical 
vision  in  the  case,  — "  vision  without  dark  speeches." 
Such,  too,  was  the  character  of  other  of  the  Mosaic  visions, 
besides  that  of  the  "  pattern "  seen  in  the  Mount.  The 
burning  bush,  for  instance,  was  a  vision  addressed  to  the 


OF    CREATION.  187 

eye ;  and  seemed  to  come  so  palpably  under  the  ordinary 
optical  laws,  that  the  prophet  drew  near  to  examme  the 
extraordinary  phenomena  M'hich  it  exhibited. 

The  visual  or  optical  character  of  some  of  the  revelations 
made  to  Moses  thus  established,  the  Avriter  goes  on  to 
inquire  whether  that  special  revelation  Avhich  exhibits  the 
venerations  of  the  heavens  and  earth  in  their  order  was 
not  a  visual  revelation  also.  "  Were  the  words  that  Moses 
wrote,"  he  asks,  "  merely  impressed  upon  his  mind  ?  Did 
he  hold  the  pen,  and  another  dictate  ?  Or  did  he  see  in 
vision  the  scenes  that  he  describes?  The  freshness  and 
point  of  the  narrative,"  he  continues,  "  the  freedom  of  the 
description,  and  the  unlikelihood  that  Moses  was  an  un- 
thinking machine  in  the  composition,  all  indicate  that  he 
saw  in  vision  what  he  has  here  given  us  in  writing.  He  is 
describing  frotn  actual  observation.''''  The  writer  remarks 
in  an  earlier  portion  of  his  treatise,  that  all  who  have 
adopted  the  theory  advocated  in  the  previous  lecture,  — 
the  "  Two  Records,"  which  was,  I  may  state,  published  in 
a  separate  form,  ere  the  appearance  of  his  woi'k,  and  Avhich 
he  does  me  the  honor  of  largely  quoting,  —  go  upon  the 
supposition  that  things  during  the  Mosaic  days  are  de- 
scribed as  they  would  appear  to  the  eye  of  one  placed 
npon  earth  ;  and  he  argues  that,  as  no  man  existed  in  those 
distant  ages,  a  reason  must  be  assigned  for  this  popxdar 
view  of  creation  which  the  record  is  rightly  assumed  to 
take.  And  certainly,  if  it  Mas  in  reality  a  view  described 
from  actual  vision,  the  fact  would  form  of  itself  an  ade- 
quate reason.  What  man  had  actually  seen,  though  but 
in  dream  or  pictxire,  Avould  of  course  be  described  as  seen 
by  man:  like  all  human  history,  it  would,  to  borrow  from 
Kurtz,  be  founded  on  eye-witnessing;  and  the  fact  that  the 
Mosaic   record   of   creation    is    ap2:>arently  thus  founded, 


]88  THE  MOSAIC   VlSI02i 

affords  a  strong  presumption  that  it  was  in  reality  revealed, 
not  by  dictation,  but  by  vision. 

Nor,  be  it  remembered,  has  the  recognition  of  a  purely 
optical  character  in  the  revelation  been  restricted  to  the 
assertion  of  any  one  theory  of  reconciliation.  It  was  as 
certainly  held  by  Chalmers  and  Dr.  Pye  Smith,  as  by  Dr. 
Kurtz  and  the  author  of  this  treatise ;  nay,  it  has  been 
recognized  by  not  a  few  of  their  opponents  also.  Gran- 
ville Penn,  for  instance,  does  not  scruple  to  avow  his  belief, 
in  his  elaborate  "  Estimate  of  the  Minei-al  and  Mosaic  Ge- 
ologies," that  both  sun  and  moon  were  created  on  the  first 
day  of  creikion,  though  they  did  not  become  "  optically 
visible  "  until  the  fourth.  "  In  truth,  that  the  fourth  day 
only  rendered  visible  the  sidereal  creation  of  the  first  day, 
is  manifested,"  he  says,  "  by  collating  the  transactions  of 
the  two  days.  On  the  first  day,  Ave  are  told  generally, 
'God  divided  the  light,  or  day,  and  the  darkness,  or 
night ; '  but  the  physical  agents  which  he  employed  for 
that  division  are  not  there  declared.  On  the  fourth  day, 
we  are  told  referentially,  '  God  commanded  the  lights 
[or  luminaries]  for  dividing  day  and  night,  to  give  their 
light  upon  earth.'  Here,  then,  it  is  evident  from  the 
retrospective  implication  of  the  latter  description,  that 
the  lights  or  luminaries  for  dividing  day  and  night,  which 
were  to  give  their  hght  upon  the  earth  for  the  first  time 
on  the  fourth  day,  were  the  unexpressed  physical  agents 
by  Avhich  God  divided  the  day  and  night  on  the  first  day." 
Now,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  Mr,  Penn's  argument 
here,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  demonstrates  at  least 
his  own  belief  in  the  purely  optical  character  of  the  Mosaic 
account  of  the  sidereal  creation.  It  is  an  account,  he  held, 
not  of  what  God  Avrought  on  the  first  day  in  the  heavens, 
but  of  what  a  human  eye  would  have  seen  on  the  fourth 


OF    CREATION.  189 

day  from  tlie  earth.  And  Moses  Stuart,  in  his  philological 
assault  on  the  geologists,  is  scarce  less  explicit  in  his  avowal 
of  a  similar  belief.  "  Every  one  sees,"  he  says,  "  that  to 
speak  of  the  sun  as  rising  and  setting,  is  to  describe,  in 
common  parlance,  what  appears  optically^  that  is,  to  our 
sensible  view,  as  reality.  But  the  history  of  creation  is 
a  different  affair.  In  one  respect,  indeed,  there  is  a  re- 
semblance. The  historian  everywhere  sjjeaks  as  an  optical 
observer  stationed  on  a  2^oint  of  our  v)orld,  and  surveying 
from  this  the  heavens  and  the  earthy  and  speaking  of  them 
as  seen  in  this  manner  hy  his  bodily  eye.  The  sim,  and 
moon,  and  stars,  arc  sei-v^ants  of  the  earth,  lighted  up  to 
garnish  and  to  cheer  it,  and  to  be  the  guardians  of  its  times 
and  seasons.  Other  uses  he  knows  not  for  them :  certainly 
of  other  uses  he  does  not  speak.  Tlic  distances,  magni- 
tudes, orbicular  motions,  gravitating  powers,  and  projectile 
forces  of  the  planets  and  of  the  stars,  are  all  out  of  the 
circle  of  his  history,  and  jirobably  beyond  his  knowledge. 
Inspiration  does  not  make  men  omniscient.  It  does  not 
teach  them  the  scientific  ti'uths  of  astronomy,  or  chemistry, 
or  botany,  nor  any  science  as  such.  Inspiration  is  con- 
cerned v\dth  teaching  religioiis  truths,  and  such  facts  or 
occurrences  as  are  connected  immediately  with  illustrating, 
or  Avith  impressing  them  on  the  mind."  Thus  far  Dr. 
Stuart  and  Mr.  Penn,  —  men  whose  evidence  on  this  special 
head  must  be  sufHcient  to  shoAv  that  it  is  not  merely  geolo- 
gists who  have  recognized  an  optical  or  visual  character  in 
the  Mosaic  history  of  creation.  And  certainly  the  infer- 
ence deduced  from  the  admitted  fact^  that  is,  the  inference 
that  the  optical  description  must  have  been  founded  on  a 
I'evelation  addressed  to  the  eye, —  a  revelation  by  vision, — ■ 
does  seem  a  fair  and  legitimate  one.  The  revelation  must 
have  been  either  a  revelation  in  words  or  ideas,  or  a  reve- 
lation of  scenes  and  events  pictorially  exhibited.     Failing, 


190  THE    MOSAIC   VISION 

however,  to  record  its  own  history,  it  leaves  the  student 
equally  at  liberty,  so  far  as  external  evidence  is  concerned, 
to  take  up  either  view;  while,  so  far  as  internal  evidence 
goes,  the  presumption  seems  all  in  favor  of  revelation  by 
vision ;  for,  while  no  reason  can  be  assigned  Avhy,  in  a 
revelation  by  word  or  idea,  appearances  which  took  place 
ere  there  existed  a  human  eye  should  be  optically  de- 
scribed, nothing  can  be  more  natural  or  obvious  than  that 
they  should  be  so  described,  had  they  been  revealed  by 
vision  as  a  piece  of  eye-witnessin (/ .  It  seems,  then,  at  least 
eminently  probable  that  such  was  the  mode  or  form  of  the 
revelation  in  this  case,  and  that  he  who  saw  by  vision  on 
the  Mount  the  pattern  of  the  Tabernacle  and  its  sacred 
furnitui'e,  and  in  the  Wilderness  of  Horeb  the  bush  burn- 
ing but  not  consumed,  —  types  and  symbols  of  the  coming 
dispensation  and  of  its  Divine  Author,  —  saw  also  by 
vision  thepa^^eni  of  those  successive  pre-Adamic  creations, 
animal  and  vegetable,  through  which  our  world  was  fitted 
Tip  as  a  place  of  human  habitation.  The  reason  why  the 
drama  of  creation  has  been  optically  described  see7ns  to  be, 
that  it  was  in  reality  visionally  revealed, 

A  further  question  still  remains :  If  the  revelation  Avas  by 
vision,  that  circumstance  affords  of  itself  a  satisfactory 
reason  why  the  description  should  be  optical ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  since  the  description  is  decidedly  optical^  the 
presumption  is  of  course  strong  that  the  revelation  Avas  by 
vision.  But  Avhy,  it  may  be  asked,  by  vision  ?  Can  the 
presumption  be  yet  further  strengthened  by  shoAving  that 
this  visual  mode  or  form  was  preferable  to  any  other  ?  Can 
there  be  a  reason,  in  fine,  assigned /or  the  reasow,  —  for 
that  revelation  by  vision  which  accounts  for  the  optical 
character  of  the  desci"iption  ?  The  question  is  a  difiicult 
one ;  but  I  think  there  can.  There  seems  to  be  a  peculiar 
fitness  in  a  revelation  made  by  vision,  for  conveying  an 


OF    CREATION.  191 

account  of  creation  to  various  tribes  and  peoples  of  various 
degrees  of  acquirement,  and  througliout  a  long  course  of 
ages  in  Avhich  the  knowledge  of  the  heavenly  bodies  or  of  the 
earth's  history,  that  is,  the  sciences  of  astronomy  and  geol- 
ogy, did  not  at  first  exist,  but  in  which  ultimately  they  came 
to  be  studied  and  known.  We  must  recognize  such  a  mode 
as  equally  fitted  for  the  earlier  and  the  more  modern  times, 
—  for  the  ages  anterior  to  the  rise  of  science,  and  the  ages 
posterior  to  its  rise.  The  prophet,  by  describing  what  he 
had  actually  seen  in  language  fitted  to  the  ideas  of  his  time, 
M'Ould  shock  no  previously  existing  prejudice  that  had  been 
founded  on  the  apparent  evidence  of  the  senses ;  he  could 
as  safely  describe  the  moon  as  the  second  great  light  of 
creation,  as  he  could  the  sun  as  its  first  great  light,  and  both, 
too,  as  equally  subordinate  to  the  planet  which  we  inhabit. 
On  the  other  hand,  an  enlightened  age,  when  it  had  come 
to  discover  this  key  to  the  description,  Avould  find  it  opii- 
callxj  true  in  all  its  details.  But  how  diiferently  would  not 
a  revelation  have  fared,  in  at  least  the  earlier  time,  that  was 
strictly  scientific  in  its  details,  —  a  revelation,  for  instance, 
of  the  great  truth  demonstrated  by  Galileo,  that  the  sun 
rests  in  the  centre  of  the  heavens,  while  the  apparently 
immoveable  earth  sweeps  with  giddy  velocity  aroimd  it; 
or  of  the  great  truth  demonstrated  by  Newton,  that  our 
ponderous  planet  is  kept  from  falling  off  into  empty  space 
by  the  operation  of  the  same  law  that  impels  a  descending 
pebble  towards  the  ground !  A  great  miracle  wrought  in 
proof  of  the  truth  of  the  revelation  might  serve  to  enforce 
the  belief  of  it  on  the  generation  to  whom  it  had  been 
given;  but  the  generations  that  followed,  to  Avhom  the 
miracle  would  exist  as  a  piece  of  mere  testimony,  Avould 
credit,  in  preference,  the  apparently  surer  evidence  of  their 
senses,  and  become  unbelievers.  They  Avould  act,  all  unwit- 
tingly, on  the  principle  of  Hume's  famous  argument,  and 


192  THE    MOSAIC    VISION 

prefer  to  rest  rather  on  their  own  experience  of  the  great 
phenomena  of  nature,  than  on  the  donbtful  testunony  of 
their  ancestors,  reduced  in  the  lapse  of  ages  to  a  dim, 
attenuated  tradition.  Nor  Avouki  a  geological  revelation 
have  fared  better,  in  at  least  those  periods  intermediate 
between  the  darker  and  more  scientific  ages,  in  which 
ingenious  men,  somewhat  skeptical  in  their  leanings,  cultivate 
literature,  and  look  dowm  rather  superciliously  on  the  igno. 
ranee  and  barbarism  of  the  past.  What  would  skejjtics  such 
as  Hobbes  and  Hume  have  said  of  an  opening  chapter  in  Gene- 
sis that  Avould  describe  successive  periods,  —  first  of  mol- 
luscs, star-lilies,  and  crustaceans,  next  of  fishes,  next  of  rep- 
tiles and  birds,  then  of  mammals,  and  finally  of  man  ;  and 
that  would  minutely  portray  a  period  in  which  there  were 
lizards  bulkier  than  elephants,  reptilian  whales  furnished 
with  necks  slim  and  long  as  the  bodies  of  great  snakes,  and 
flying  dragons,  whose  spread  of  wing  greatly  more  than 
doubled  that  of  the  largest  bird  ?  The  world  would  assur- 
edly not  receive  such  a  revelation.  Nor,  further,  have 
scientific  facts  or  principles  been  revealed  to  man  which  he 
has  been  furnished  with  the  ability  of  observing  or  discover- 
ing for  himself.  It  is  according  to  the  economy  of  revelation, 
that  the  truths  Avhich  it  exhibits  should  be  of  a  kind  which, 
lying  beyond  the  reach  of  his  ken,  he  himself  could  never 
have  elicited.  From  every  view  of  the  case,  then,  a  pro- 
phetic exhibition  of  the  pre-Adamic  scenes  and  CA^ents  by 
vision  seems  to  be  the  one  best  suited  for  the  opening  chap- 
ters of  a  revelation  vouchsafed  for  the  accomplishment  of 
moral,  not  scientific  purj)oses,  and  at  once  destined  to  be 
contemporary  Avith  every  stage  of  civilization,  and  to  address 
itself  to  minds  of  every  various  calibre,  and  every  different 
degree  of  enlightenment. 

■   The  statement  of  Dr.  Kurtz,  that  as  vision  of  pre-Adamic 
history  comes  under  the  same  laws  as  vision  of  history  still 


OF    CREATION.  193 

future,  it  ouglit  therefore  to  be  read  by  the  same  rules, 
craves  reflection.  "  Since  the  source  of  knowledge  for  both 
kinds  of  history,"  we  find  liim  saying,  "  and  not  only  the 
source,  but  the  means,  and  manner,  and  way  of  coming  to 
know,  is  the  same,  viz.,  the  eye-witness  of  the  j^rophet's 
mental  eye,  it  follows  that  the  historical  representation 
which  he  who  thus  comes  to  know,  ^yt'ojects  [or  portrays], 
in  virtue  of  this  eye-witnessing  of  his,  holds  the  same 
relation  to  the  reality  in  both  the  cases  we  speak  of,  and 
must  be  subjected  to  the  same  laws  of  exposition.  We 
thus  get  this  vei'y  important  rule  of  interpretation,  viz.,  that 
the  representations  of  pre-human  events,  which  rest  upon 
revelation,  are  to  be  handled  from  the  same  point  of  view, 
and  expounded  by  the  same  laws,  as  the  prophecies  and 
rei^resentations  of  future  times  and  events,  which  also  rest 
upon  revelation.  This,  then,  is  the  only  proper  point  of 
view  for  scientific  exposition  of  the  Mosaic  history  of  cre- 
ation ;  that  is  to  say,  if  we  acknowledge  that  it  proceeded 
from  Divine  revelation,  not  from  philosoi^hic  speculation  or 
experimental  investigation,  or  from  the  ideas  of  reflecting 
men."  There  is  certainly  food  for  tliought  in  this  striking 
and  original  view ;  and  there  is  at  least  one  simple  rule  of 
prophetic  exposition  Avhich  may  be  applied  to  the  pre-Adamic 
history,  in  accordance  wnth  the  principle  which  it  suggests. 
After  all  that  a  scientific  theology  has  done  for  the  right 
interpretation  of  prophecy,  we  find  the  prediction  always 
best  read  by  the  light  of  its  accomplishment.  The  event 
which  it  foretold  forms  its  true  key ;  and  Avhen  this  key  is 
wanting,  all  is  uncertainty.  The  past  is  comparatively  clear. 
The  hierogh^phic  forms  which  crowd  the  anterior  portions 
of  the  prophetic  tablet  are  found  wonderfully  to  harmonize 
(men  such  as  the  profound  Newton  being  the  judges)  with 
those  great  historic  events,  already  become  matter  of  his- 
tory, which  they  foi*eshadowed  and  symbolized  ;  but,  on  the 
17 


194  THE   MOSAIC    VISION 

Other  hand,  the  hieroglyphics  which  occupy  the  tablet's 
posterior  j^ortion, — the  hieroglyphics  that  symbolize  events 
still  future,  —  are  invincibly  difficult  and  inexplicable.  I 
have  read  several  works  on  prophecy  produced  in  the  last 
age,  in  which  the  writers  Avere  bold  enough  to  quit  the  clue 
with  which  history  furnishes  the  student  of  fulfilled  proph- 
ecy, and,  with  the  prophecies  yet  unfulfilled  as  their 
guide,  to  plunge  into  a  troubled  sea  of  speculation  regarding 
the  history  of  the  future.  And  I  have  found  that  in  every 
instance  they  were  deplorably  at  fault  regarding  even  the 
events  that  were  nearest  at  hand  at  the  time.  History  is 
thus  the  surest  interpreter  of  the  revealed  prophecies  which 
referred  to  events  j^osterior  to  the  times  of  the  prophet. 
In  what  shall  Ave  find  the  surest  interpretation  of  the 
revealed  jyropliecies  that  referred  to  events  anterior  to  his 
time  ?  In  Avhat  light,  or  on  what  principle,  shall  we  most 
correctly  read  the  prophetic  drama  of  creation  ?  In  the 
light,  I  reply,  of  scientific  discovery,  —  on  the  principle  that 
the  clear  and  cei'tain  must  be  accepted,  when  attainable,  as 
the  proper  exponents  of  the  doubtful  and  obscure.  What 
fully  dcA'eloped  histoi:y  is  to  the  prophecy  Avhich  of  old 
looked  forwards,  fully  developed  science  is  to  the  prophecy 
which  of  old  looked  backwards.  Scarce  any  one  will  ques- 
tion whether  that  portion  of  the  creation  drama  which  deals 
with  the  heavenly  bodies  ought  to  be  read  in  the  light  of 
established  astronomic  discovery  or  no ;  for,  save  by  per- 
haps a  few  of  Father  Cullen's  monks,  Avho  can  still  hold 
that  the  sun  moves  round  the  earth,  and  is  only  six  feet  in 
diameter,  all  theologians  have  now  received  the  astronomic 
doctrines,  and  know  that  they  rest  upon  a  basis  at  least  as 
certain  as  any  of  the  historic  events  symbolized  in  fulfilled 
prophecy.  And  were  we  to  challenge  for  the  established 
geologic  doctrines  a  similar  place  and  position  with  respect 
to  those  portions  of  the  drama  which  deal  with  the  two 


OF   CREATION.  195 

pH'cat  Icinpfcloms  of  nature,  plant  and  animal,  we  might  safely 
do  so  in  the  belief  that  the  claim  will  be  one  day  as  univer- 
sally recognized  as  the  astronomic  one  is  now. 

On  this  principle  there  may,  of  course,  be  portions  of  the 
prophetic  pre-Adamic  past  of  as  doubtful  interpretation  at 
the  present  time,  from  the  imperfect  development  of  i)hysical 
science,  as  is  any  portion  of  the  prophetic  future  from  the 
imperfect  development  of  historic  events.  The  science 
necessary  to  the  interpretation  of  the  one  may  be  as  cer- 
tainly still  to  discover  as  the  events  necessary  to  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  other  may  be  still  to  take  place.  Three 
centuries  have  not  yet  passed  since  astronomic  science  was 
sufficiently  developed  to  form  a  true  key  to  the  various 
notices  of  the  heavenly  bodies  which  occur  in  Scripture ; 
among  the  others,  to  the  notice  of  their  final  appearance  on 
the  fourth  day  of  creation.  Little  more  than  half  a  century 
has  yet  passed  since  geologic  science  Avas  sufficiently  devel- 
oped to  influence  the  interpretation  given  of  the  three  other 
days'  work.  And  respecting  the  work  of  at  least  the  first 
and  second  days,  more  especially  that  of  the  second,  we  can 
stDl  but  vaguely  guess.  The  science  necessaiy  to  the  right 
understanding  of  these  portions  of  the  prophetic  record  has 
still,  it  would  seem,  to  be  developed,  if,  indeed,  it  be  destined 
at  all  to  exist ;  and  at  present  we  can  indulge  in  but  doubtful 
surmises  regarding  them.  What  may  be  termed  the  three 
geologic  days,  —  the  third,  fifth,  and  sixth,  —  may  be  held 
to  have  extended  over  those  Carboniferous  periods  during 
which  the  great  plants  were  created,  —  over  those  Oolitic 
and  Cretacious  periods  during  which  the  great  sea  monsters 
and  birds  were  created,  —  and  over  those  Tertiary  periods 
during  which  the  great  terrestrial  mammals  were  created. 
For  the  intervening  or  fourth  day  we  have  that  wide  space 
ropresented  by  the  Permian  and  Triassic  periods,  which, 
less  conspicuous  in  their  floras  than  the  period  that  went 


196  THE    MOSAIC    VISION 

immediately  before,  and  less  conspicuous  in  their  faunas 
than  the  periods  that  came  immediately  after,  were  marked 
by  the  decline,  and  ultimate  extinction,  of  the  Palaeozoic 
forms,  and  the  first  partially  developed  beginnings  of  the 
Secondary  ones.  And  for  the  first  and  second  days  there 
remain  the  great  Azoic  period,  during  which  the  immensely 
developed  gneisses,  mica  schists,  and  primary  clay  slates, 
were  deposited,  and  the  two  extended  periods  represented 
by  the  Silurian  and  Old  Red  Sandstone  systems.  These, 
taken  together,  exhaust  the  geologic  scale,  and  may  be 
named  in  their  order  as,  firsts  the  Azoic  day  or  period; 
second^  the  Silurian  and  Old  Red  Sandstone  day  or  period ; 
third.,  the  Carboniferous  day  or  period ;  fourth.,  the  Permian 
and  Triassic  day  or  period  ;  ffth.,  the  Oolitic  and  Cretaceous 
day  or  period ;  and  sixth.,  the  Tertiary  day  or  period.  Let 
us  attempt  conceiving  how  they  might  have  appeared  pic- 
torially,  if  revealed  in  a  series  of  visions  to  Moses,  as  the 
successive  scenes  of  a  great  air-drawn  panorama. 

During  the  Azoic  period,  ere  life  appears  to  have  begun 
on  our  planet,  the  temperature  of  the  earth's  crust  seems  to 
have  been  so  high,  that  the  strata,  at  first  deposited  appar- 
ently in  water,  passed  into  a  semi-fluid  state,  became 
strangely  waved  and  contorted,  and  assumed  in  its  com- 
position a  highly  crystalline  character.  Such  is  peculiarly 
the  case  with  the  fundamental  or  gneiss  deposits  of  the 
period.  In  the  overlying  mica  schist  there  is  still  much  of 
contortion  and  disturbance  ;  whereas  the  clay  slate,  which 
lies  over  all,  gives  evidence,  in  its  more  mechanical  texture, 
and  the  regularity  of  its  strata,  that  a  gradual  refrigeration 
of  the  general  mass  had  been  taking  place,  and  that  the 
close  of  the  Azoic  period  was  comparatively  quiet  and  cool. 
Let  us  suppose  that  during  the  earlier  part  of  this  period 
of  excessive  heat  the  waters  of  the  ocean  had  stood  at  the 
boiling  point  even  at  the  surface,  and  much  higher  in  the 


OF    CREATION.  197 

profounder  depths,  and  further,  that  the  half-molten  crust 
of  the  earth,  stretched  out  over  a  molten  abyss,  was  so  thin 
that  it  could  not  support,  save  for  a  short  time,  after  some 
convulsion,  even  a  small  island  above  the  sea  level.  What, 
in  such  circumstances,  would  be  the  aspect  of  the  scene, 
optically  exhibited  from  some  point  in  space  elevated  a  few 
hundred  yards  over  the  sea  ?  It  would  be  simply  a  blank, 
in  which  the  intensest  glow  of  fire  would  fail  to  be  seen  at 
a  few  yards'  distance.  An  inconsiderable  escape  of  steam 
from  the  safety-valve  of  a  railway  engine  forms  so  thick  a 
screen,  that,  as  it  lingers  for  a  moment,  in  the  passing, 
opposite  the  carriage  Avindows,  the  passengers  fail  to 
discern  through  it  the  landscape  beyond.  A  continuous 
stratum  of  steam,  then,  that  attained  to  the  height  of  even 
our  present  atmosphere,  Avould  wrap  u^)  the  earth  in  a 
darkness  gross  and  palpable  as  that  of  Egypt  of  old, — a 
darkness  through  which  even  a  single  ray  of  light  Avould 
fail  to  penetrate.  And  beneath  this  thick  canopy  the  un- 
seen deep  Avould  literally  "  boil  as  a  pot,"  Avildly  tempested 
from  below ;  while  from  time  to  time  more  deeply  seated 
convulsion  Avould  upheave  sudden  to  the  surface  vast  tracts 
of  semi-molten  rock,  soon  again  to  disappear,  r.nd  from 
which  waves  of  bulk  enormous  would  roll  outAvards,  to 
meet  in  wild  conflict  with  the  giant  waves  of  other  convul- 
sions, or  return  to  hiss  and  sputter  against  the  intensely 
heated  and  fast  foundering  mass,  whose  violent  upheaval 
had  first  elevated  and  sent  them  abroad.  Such  would  b» 
the  probable  state  of  things  during  the  times  of  the  earlier 
gneiss  and  mica  schist  deposits,  —  times  buried  deep  in 
that  chaotic  night  or  "  evening "  which  must  have  con- 
tmued  to  exist  for  mayhap  many  ages  after  that  beginning 
of  things  in  which  God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth, 
and  which  preceded  the  first  day.  To  a  human  eye  star 
tioned  within  the  cloud,  all,  as  I  have  said,  must  have  been 
17* 


198  THE    MOSAIC    VlSIOIi 

thick  darkness:  to  eyes  Divine,  that  could  have  looked 
through  the  enveloping  haze,  the  appearance  Avould  have 
been  that  described  by  Milton,  as  seen  by  angel  and  arch- 
angel at  the  beginning  of  creation,  Avhen  from  the  gates  of 
heaven  they  looked  down  upon  chaos :  — 

"  On  heavenly  ground  they  stood,  and  from  the  shore 
They  viewed  the  vast  immeasurable  abyss, 
Outrageous  as  a  sea,  dark,  wasteful,  wild, 
Up  from  the  bottom  turned  by  furious  heat 
And  surging  waves,  as  mountains  to  assault 
Heaven's  height,  and  with  the  centre  mix  the  pole." 

At  length,  hoAvever,  as  the  earth's  surface  gradually 
cooled  down,  and  the  enveloping  Avaters  sunk  to  a  lower 
temperature,  —  let  us  suppose,  during  the  latter  times  of 
the  mica  schist,  and  the  earlier  times  of  the  clay  slate,  — 
the  steam  atmosphere  Avould  become  less  dense  and  thick, 
and  at  length  the  rays  of  the  sun  Avould  struggle  through, 
at  first  doubtfully  and  diifused,  forming  a  faint  tAvilight, 
but  gradually  strengthening  as  the  latter  ages  of  the  slate 
formation  passed  away,  until,  at  the  close  of  the  great 
primary  period,  day  and  night,  —  the  one  still  dim  and 
gray,  the  other  Avrapped  in  a  pall  of  thickest  darkness,  — 
Avould  succeed  each  other  as  now,  as  the  earth  revolved  on 
its  axis,  and  the  unseen  luminary  rose  high  over  the  cloud 
in  the  east,  or  sunk  in  the  west  beneath  the  undefined  and 
murky  horizon.  And  here  again  the  oj^tical  appearance 
would  be  exactly  that  described  by  Milton :  — 

'"Let  there  be  light,'  said  God,  and  forthwith  light 
Ethereal,  first  of  things,  quintessence  pure. 
Sprung  from  the  deep,  and  from  her  native  east 
To  journey  through  the  airy  gloom  began, 
Sphered  in  a  radiant  cloud,  for  yet  the  sun 
Was  not :  she  in  a  cloudy  tabernacle 
Sojourned  the  while.    God  saw  the  light  was  good. 


OF    CREATION.  199 

And  light  from  darkness  by  the  hemisphere 
Divided  :  liglit  the  day,  and  darkness  night, 
He  named.    This  was  the  first  day,  even  and  mom." 

The  second  day's  work  has  been  interpreted  variously, 
according  to  the  generally  received  science  of  the  times  of 
the  various  commentators  who  have  dealt  with  it.  Even 
in  Milton,  though  the  great  poet  rejected  the  earlier  idea 
of  a  solid  firmament,  we  find  prominence  given  to  that  of  a 
vast  hollow  sphere  of  "  circumfluous  waters,"  which,  by 
encircling  the  atmosphere,  kept  aloof  the  "  tierce  extremes 
of  chaos."  Later  commentators,  such  as  the  late  Drs. 
Kitto  and  Pye  Smith,  hold  that  the  Scriptural  analogue 
of  the  Jinnarnent  here  —  by  the  way,  a  Greek,  not  a 
Hebrew  idea,  first  introduced  into  the  Septuagint  —  was  in 
reality  simply  the  atmosphere  with  its  clouds.  "  The 
historian "  [Moses],  says  Dr.  Kitto,  "  speaks  as  things 
would  have  appeared  to  a  spectator  at  the  time  of  the 
creation,  A  portion  of  the  heavy  Avatery  vapor  had  flown 
into  the  upper  regions,  and  rested  there  in  dense  clouds, 
which  still  obscured  the  sun ;  while  below,  the  whole  earth 
was  covered  with  water.  Thus  we  see  the  propriety  with 
which  the  firmament  is  said  to  have  divided  the  waters 
from  the  waters."  It  is  certainly  probable  that  in  a  vision 
of  creation  the  atmospheric  phenomena  of  the  second  great 
act  of  the  creation  drama  might  have  stood  out  with  much 
greater  prominence  to  the  prophetic  eye  placed  in  the 
circumstances  of  a  natural  one,  than  any  of  its  other  ap- 
pearances. .  The  invertebrate  life  of  the  Silurian  period,  or 
even  the  ichthyic  life  of  the  earlier  Old  Red  Sandstone 
period,  must  have  been  comparatively  inconspicuous  from 
any  sub-aerial  point  of  view  elevated  but  a  few  hundred 
feet  over  the  sea  level.  Even  the  few  islets  of  the  latter 
ages  of  the  period,  Avith  their  ferns,  lepidodendra,  and 
coniferous    trees,    forming,   as    they    did,    an    exceptional 


200  THE   MOSAIC    VISION 

feature  in  these  ages  of  vast  oceans,  and  of  organisms  all  but 
exclusively  marine,  may  have  well  been  excluded  from  a 
representative  diorama  that  exhibited  optically  the  grand 
characteristics  of  the  time.  Further,  it  seems  equally 
probable  that  the  introduction  of  organized  existence  on 
our  planet  was  preceded  by  a  change  in  the  atmospheric 
conditions  which  had  obtained  during  the  prcAdous  period, 
in  which  the  earth  had  been  a  desert  and  empty  void.  We 
know  that  just  before  the  close  of  the  Silurian  ages  terres- 
trial plants  had  appeared,  and  that  before  the  close  of  the 
Old  Red  Sandstone  ages,  air-breathing  animals  had  been 
produced ;  and  infer  that  the  atmosphere  in  Avhich  both 
could  have  existed  must  have  been  considerably  different 
from  that  which  lay  dark  and  heavy  over  the  bare  hot 
rocks,  and  tenantless,  steam-emitting  seas,  of  the  previous 
time.  Under  a  gray,  opaque  sky,  in  which  neither  sun  nor 
moon  appear,  we  are  not  unfrequently  presented  with  a 
varied  drapery  of  clouds,  —  a  drapery  varied  in  form, 
though  not  in  color :  bank  often  seems  piled  over  bank, 
shaded  beneath  and  lighter  above ;  or  the  whole  breaks 
into  dappled  cloudlets,  Avhich  bear — to  borrow  from  the 
poetic  description  of  Bloomfield  —  the  "  beauteous  sem- 
blance of  a  flock  at  rest."  And  if  such  aerial  draperies 
appeared  in  this  early  period,  with  the  clear  space  between 
them  and  the  earth  Avhich  Ave  so  often  see  in  gray,  sunless 
days,  the  optical  aspect  must  have  been  widely  difterent 
from  that  of  the  previous  time,  in  Avhich  a  dense  vaporous 
fog  lay  heavy  upon  rock  and  sea,  and  extended  from  the 
earth's  surface  to  the  upper  heights  of  the  atmosphere. 

The  third  day's  vision  seems  to  be  more  purely  geological 
in  its  character  than  either  of  the  previous  two.  Extensive 
tracts  of  dry  land  appear,  and  there  springs  up  over  them, 
at  the  Divine  command,  a  rank  vegetation.  And  we  know 
that  what  seems  to  be  the  corresponding   Carboniferous 


OF    CREATION.  201 

period,  unlike  any  of  the  preceding  ones,  was  remarkable 
for  its  great  tracts  of  terrestrial  surface,  and  for  its  extra* 
ordinary  flora.     For  the  first  time  dry  land,  and  organized 
bodies  at  once  bulky  enough,  and  exhibited  in  a  medium 
clear  enough,  to  render  them  conspicuous  objects  in  a  dis- 
tant prospect,   appear  in  the  Mosaic  drama ;  and  we  still 
find  at  once  evidence  of  the  existence  of  extensive  though 
apparently  very  flat  lands,  and  the  remains  of  a  wonder- 
fully gigantic  and  abundant  vegetation,  in  what  appear  to 
be  the  rocks  of  this  period.     The  vision  of  the  fourth  day, 
like  that  of  the  second,  pertained  not  to  the  earth,  but  to 
the  heavens;  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  become  visible,  and 
form  the  sole  subjects  of  the  prophetic  description.     And 
just  as,  during  the  second  period,  the  earth  woul'd  in  all 
probability   have   failed   to    furnish    any   feature  of   mai-k 
enough   to    divert  a  human  eye   placed   on   a   command- 
ing  station   from    the    conspicuous   atmospheric   phenom- 
ena of  the  time,  so  it  seems  equally  probable  that  during 
this  fourth  period  it   would    have    failed    to    furnish  any 
feature  of  mark  enough  to  divert  a  human  eye  from  the 
still  more  conspicuous  celestial   phenomena  of  the   time. 
As  has  been  already  incidentally  remarked,  the  Permian 
and   Triassic    periods   Avere    "  epochs "  —  to    employ    the 
laniruasre   of   the   late    Professor   Edward    Forbes  — "  of 
great  poverty  of  production  of  generic  types."     On  the 
other  hand,  the  appearance  for  the  first  time  of  sun,  moon, 
and  stars,  must  have  formed  a  scene  well  suited  to  diveit 
the  attention  of  the  seer  from  every  other.     Nor  (as  has 
been  somewhat  rashly  argued  by  Dr.  Kitto  and  several 
others)    does  it  seem  irrational  to  hold  that   three  very 
extended  periods   should   have   elapsed    ere   the    sidereal 
heavens  became  visible  on  earth.     Addison's  popular  illus- 
tration, drawn  from  one  of  the  calculations  of  Newton, 
made  in  an  age  when  comets  were  beUeved  to  be  solid 


202  THE    MOSAIC   VISION 

bodies,  rendered  the  reading  public  familiai*,  considerably- 
more  than  a  century  ago,  with  the  vast  time  which  large 
bodies  greatly  heated  would  take  in  cooling,     "  According 
to   Sir   Isaac   Newton's   calculation,"  said  the  exquisitely 
classical  essayist,  "  the  comet  that  made  its  appearance  in 
1680  imbibed  so  much  heat  by  its  approaches  to  the  sun, 
that  it  would  have  been  two  thousand  times  liotter  than 
red  hot  iron  had  it  been  a  globe  of  that  metal ;  and  that, 
supposing  it  as  big  as  the  earth,  and  at  the  same  distance 
from  the  sun,  it  Avould  be  fifty  thousand  years  in  cooling 
before   it   recovered  its   natural    temper."     Such   was   an 
estimate  of  the  philosopher,  that  excited  no  little  wonder 
in  the  days  of  our  great  grandfathers,  for  the  vast  time 
which  it  demanded ;  and,  now  that  the  data  on  which  such 
a  calculation  ought  to  be  founded  are  better  known  than 
in  the  age  of  Newton,  yet  more  time  would  be  required 
still.     It  is  now  ascertained,  from  the  circumstance  that  no 
dew  is  deposited  in  our   summer   evenings  save  under  a 
clear  sky,  that  even  a  thin  covering  of  cloud,  —  serving  as 
a  robe  to  keep  the  earth  warm,  —  prevents  the  surface  heat 
of  the  planet  from  radiating  into  the  spaces  beyond.     And 
such  a  cloud,  thick  and  continuous,  as  must  have  wrapped 
round    the    earth   as  with    a  mantle    during    the    earlier 
geologic   periods,  must  have   served   to   retard  for  many 
ages   the    radiation,   and   consequently  the   reduction,   of 
that   internal   heat  of  which  it  was  itself  a  consequence. 
Further,  the   rocks   and   soils   that   form    the   surface  of 
our  globe  would  be  much  more  indifferent  conductors  of 
heat  than  the  iron  superficies  of  -Newton's  ball,  and  would 
serve    yet    more   to    lengthen   out    the    cooling    process. 
Nor  would  a  planet  covered  over  for  ages  with  a  thick 
screen  of  vapor  be  a  novelty  even  yet  in  the  universe.     It 
is  doubtful  Avhether  astronomers  have  ever  yet  looked  on 
the  face  of  Mercury :  it  is  at  least  very  generally  held  that 


OF    CREATION  20S 

liitherto  only  his  clouds  have  been  seen.  Even  Jupiter, 
though  it  is  thought  his  mountams  have  been  occasionally 
detected  raising  their  peaks  through  openings  in  his  cloudy 
atmosphere,  is  known  chiefly  by  the  dark  shifting  bands 
that,  fleaking  his  surface  in  the  line  of  his  trade  winds, 
belong  not  to  his  body,  but  to  his  thick  dark  covering. 
It  is  questionable  whether  a  human  eye  on  the  surface  of 
Mercury  would  ever  behold  the  sun,  notwithstanding  his 
near  proximity ;  nor  Avould  he  be  often  visible,  if  at  all, 
from  the  surface  of  Jupiter.  Nor,  yet  further,  Avould  a 
warm  steaming  atmosphere  muflJed  in  clouds  have  been 
unfavorable  to  a  rank,  flowerless  vegetation  like  that  of  the 
Coal  Measures.  There  are  moist,  mild,  cloudy  days  of 
spring  and  early  summer  that  rejoice  the  heart  of  the 
farmer,  for  he  knows  how  conducive  they  are  to  the  young 
growth  on  his  fields.  The  Coal  Measure  climate  would 
have  consisted  of  an  unbroken  series  of  these,  with  may- 
hap a  little  more  of  cloud  and  moisture,  and  a  great  deal 
more  of  heat.  The  earth  M^ould  have  been  a  vast  green- 
house covered  Avith  smoked  glass ;  and  a  vigorous  though 
mayhap  loosely  knit  and  faintly  colored  vegetation  would 
have  luxuriated  under  its  shade. 

The  fifth  and  sixth  days,  —  that  of  winged  fowl  and  great 
sea  monsters,  and  that  of  cattle  and  beasts  of  the  earth,  — 
I  must  regard  as  adequately  represented  by  those  Secondary 
ages.  Oolitic  and  Cretaceous,  during  which  birds  were  intro- 
duced, and  reptiles  received  their  gi*eatest  development,  and 
those  Tertiary  ages  during  which  the  gigantic  mammals 
possessed  the  earth  and  occupied  the  largest  space  in  cre- 
ation. To  the  close  of  this  latter  period,  —  the  evening  of 
the  sixth  day,  —  man  belongs,  —  at  once  the  last  created  of 
terrestrial  creatures,  and  infinitely  beyond  comparison  the 
most  elevated  in  the  scale ;  and  with  man's  appearance  on 
the  scene  the  days  of  creation  end,  and  the  Divine  Sabbath 


204  THE   MOSAIC   VISION 

begins, — that  Sabbath  of  rest  from  creative  labor  of  which 
the  proper  work  is  the  moral  development  and  elevation  of 
the  species,  and  which  will  teiTninate  only  with  the  full  com- 
pletion of  that  sublime  task  on  the  full  accomplishment  of 
which  God's  eternal  purposes  and  the  tendencies  of  man's 
progressive  nature  seem  alike  directed.  Now,  I  am  greatly 
mistaken  if  we  have  not  in  the  six  geologic  periods  all  the 
elements,  without  misplacement  or  exaggeration,  of  the 
Mosaic  drama  of  creation. 

I  have  referred  in  my  brief  survey  to  extended  periods. 
It  is  probable,  however,  that  the  prophetic  vision  of  creation, 
if  such  was  its  character,  consisted  of  only  single  represent- 
ative scenes,  embracing  each  but  a  point  of  time ;  it  was, 
let  us  suppose,  a  diorama,  over  whose  shifting  pictures  the 
curtain  rose  and  fell  six  times  in  succession,  —  once  during 
the  Azoic  period,  once  during  the  earlier  or  middle  PaliBO- 
zoic  period,  once  during  the  Carboniferous  period,  once  dur- 
ing the  Permian  or  Triassic  period,  once  during  the  Oolitic 
or  Cretaceous  period,  and  finally,  once  during  the  Tertiaiy 
period.     Dr.  Kurtz  holds,  taking  the  Sabbath  into  the  series, 
that  the  division  into  seveji  scenes  or  stages  may  have  been 
regulated  with  reference  to  the  importance  and  sacredness 
of  the  mythic  number  seven,  —  the  symbol  of  completeness 
or  perfection  ;  but  the  suggestion  will  perhaps  not  now  carry 
much  weight  among  the  theologians  of  Britain,  whatever  it 
might  have  done  two  centuries  ago.    It  is  true,  that  creation 
might  have  been  exhibited,  not  by  seven,  but  by  seven  hun- 
dred, or  even  by  seven   thousand   scenes;   and  that  the 
accomplished  man  of  science,  skilled  in  every  branch  of 
physics,  might  have  found  something  distinct  in  them  all. 
But  not  the  less  do  the  seven,  or  rather  the  six,  exhibited 
scenes  appear  to  be  not  symbolic  or  mystical,  at  least  not 
exclusively  symbolic  or  mystical,  but  truly  representative  of 
successive  periods,  strongly  distinctive  in  their  character, 


OF    CREATION.  205 

and  capable,  with  the  three  geologic  days  as  given  points  in 
the  problem,  of  being  treated  geologically.  Another  of  the 
questions  raised,  both  by  the  German  doctor  and  the  writer 
in  our  own  country,  must  be  recognized  as  eminently  sugges- 
tive. "  We  treat  the  history  of  creation,"  says  Dr.  Kurtz, 
"  with  its  six  days'  work,  as  a  connected  series  of  so  many 
jjrophetic  visions.  The  aj^pearance  and  evanishing  of  each 
such  vision  seem  to  the  seer  as  a  morning  and  an  evening, 
apparently  because  these  were  presented  to  him  as  an 
increase  and  decrease  of  light,  like  morning  and  evening 
twilight."  And  we  find  the  Scottish  writer  taking  essen- 
tially the  same  view.  "  Each  day  contains,"  he  says,  "  the 
description  of  what  he  [Moses]  beheld  in  a  single  vision,  and 
when  it  faded  it  Avas  twilight.  There  is  nothing  forced  in 
supposing  that,  after  the  vision  had  for  a  time  illumined  the 
fancy  of  the  seer,  it  was  withdrawn  from  his  eyes,  in  the 
same  way  that  the  landscape  becomes  dim  on  the  approach 
of  evening.  .  .  .  From  this  point  of  view,  a  'day'  can 
only  mean  the  period  during  Avhich  the  Divinely  enlightened 
fancy  of  the  seer  Avas  active.  When  all  continued  bright 
and  manifest  before  his  entranced  but  still  conscious  soul,  it 
was  'day'  or  'light.'  When  the  dimness  of  departing 
enlightenment  fell  upon  the  scene,  it  was  the  evening  twi- 
light." The  days^  then,  are  removed,  we  find,  by  the  holders 
of  this  view,  altogether  from  the  province  of  chronology  to 
the  province  of  prophetic  vision ;  they  are  represented  sim- 
ply as  parts  of  the  exhibited  scenery,  or  rather  as  forming 
the  measures  of  the  apparent  time  during  which  the  scenery 
loas  exhibited.  We  must  also  hold,  however,  that  in  the 
character  of  symbolic  days  they  were  as  truly  representative 
of  the  lapse  of  foregone  periods  of  creation  as  the  scenery 
itself  was  representative  of  the  creative  work  accomi^lished 
in  these  periods.  For  if  the  apparent  days  occurred  in  only 
the  vision,  and  were  not  symbolic  of  foregone  periods,  they 
18 


206  THE    MOSAIC    VISION 

could  not  have  been  transferred  Avith  any  logical  propriety 
from  the  vision  itself  to  that  which  the  vision  represented, 
as  we  find  done  in  what  our  Shorter  Catechism  terms  "  the 
reason  annexed  to  the  Fourth  Commandment."  *  The  days 
must  have  been  prophetic  days,  introduced,  indeed,  into  the 
panorama  of  creation  as  mayhap  mere  openings  and  drop- 
pings of  the  curtain,  but  not  the  less  symbolic  of  that  series 
of  successive  periods,  each  characterized  by  its  OAvn  pro- 
ductions and  events,  in  which  creation  itself  was  comprised. 
Nothing  more  probable,  however,  than  that  even  Moses 
himself  may  have  been  unacquainted  with  the  extent  of  the 
periods  represented  in  the  vision ;  nay,  he  may  have  been 
equally  unconscious  of  the  actual  extent  of  the  seeming 
days  by  which  they  were  symbolized.  "  Visions  without 
dark  speeches,"  —  visions,  not  of  symboHc  apparitions,  but 
of  actual  existences  and  events,  past  or  present,  —  may,  nay 
must,  have  differed  from  what  may  be  termed  the  dark 
hieroglyphic  visions  ;  but  we  find  in  all  visions  an  element 
of  mere  representative  value  introduced  when  they  deal 
with  time,  and  that  they  occur  as  if  wholly  outside  its  pale. 
These  creation  "days"  seem,  in  relation  to  what  they  typify, 
to  have  been,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  the  mere  modules 
of  a  graduated  scale. 

Such  a  description  of  the  creative  vision  of  Moses  as  the 
one  given  by  Milton  of  that  vision  of  the  future,  which  he 
represents  as  conjured  up  before  Adam  by  the  archangel, 
would  be  a  task  rather  for  the  scientific  poet  than  for  the 
mere  practical  geologist  or  sober  theologian.  Let  us  sup- 
pose that  it  took  place  far  from  man,  in  an  untrodden  recess 
of  the  Midian  desert,  ere  yet  the  vision  of  the  burning  bush 
had  been  vouchsafed ;  and  that,  as  in  the  vision  of  St.  John 

*  "For  in  six  days  the  Lord  made  heaven  and  earth,  the  sea,  and  all 
that  in  them  is,  and  rested  the  seventh  day :  wherefore  the  Lord  blessed 
the  Sabbath  day,  and  hallowed  it." 


OF    CREATION.  ^  207 

in  Patmos,  voices  were  mingled  Avith  scenes,  and  the  ear  as 
certainly  addressed  as  the  eye.  A  "great  darkness"  first 
falls  upon  the  prophet,  like  that  Avhich  in  an  earlier  age  fell 
upon  Abraham,  but  without  the  "horror;"  and,  as  the 
Divine  Spirit  moves  on  the  face  of  the  wildly  troubled 
waters,  as  a  visible  aurora  enveloped  by  the  pitchy  cloud, 
the  great  doctrine  is  orally  enunciated,  that  "  m  the  begin- 
ning God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth."  Unreckoned 
ages,  condensed  in  the  vision  into  a  few  brief  moments,  pass 
away ;  the  creative  voice  is  again  heard,  "  Let  there  be 
light,"  and  straightway  a  gray  diifused  light  springs  up  in 
the  east,  and,  casting  its  sickly  gleam  over  a  cloud-limited 
expanse  of  steaming,  vaporous  sea,  journeys  through  the 
heavens  towards  the  Avest.  One  heavy,  sunless  day  is  made 
the  representative  of  myriads ;  the  faint  light  waxes  fiiinter, 
—  it  sinks  beneath  the  dim,  undefined  horizon ;  the  first 
scene  of  the  drama  closes  upon  the  seer  ;  and  he  sits  aAvhile 
on  his  hill-top  in  darkness,  solitary  but  not  sad,  in  what 
seems  to  be  a  calm  and  starless  night. 

The  light  again  brightens,  —  it  is  day;  and  over  an 
expanse  of  ocean  without  visible  bound  the  horizon  has 
become  wider  and  sharper  of  outline  than  before.  There  is 
life  in  that  great  sea,  —  invertebrate,  mayhap  also  ichthyic, 
life ;  but,  from  the  comj^arative  distance  of  the  point  of 
view  occupied  by  the  prophet,  only  the  slow  roll  of  its  Avaves 
can  be  discerned,  as  they  rise  and  fall  in  long  undulations 
before  a  gentle  gale  ;  and  what  most  strongly  impresses  the 
eye  is  the  change  which  has  taken  place  in  the  atmospheric 
scenery.  That  lower  stratum  of  the  heavens  occupied  in 
the  previous  vision  by  seething  steam,  or  gray,  smoke-like 
fog,  is  clear  and  transparent ;  and  only  in  an  upper  region, 
where  the  previously  invisible  vapor  of  the  tepid  sea  has 
thickened  in  the  cold,  do  the  clouds  appear.  But  there,  in 
the  higher  strata  of  the  atmosphere  they  lie,  thick  and 


208  THE   MOSAIC   VISION 

manifold,  —  an  upper  sea  of  great  AvaA'es,  separated  from 
those  beneath  by  the  transparent  firmanent,  and,  like  them 
too,  impelled  in  rolling  masses  by  the  -wind.  A  mighty 
advance  has  taken  place  in  creation ;  but  its  most  conspicu- 
ous optical  sign  is  the  existence  of  a  transparent  atmosphere, 
—  of  a  firmanent  stretched  out  over  the  earth,  that  sepa- 
rates the  waters  above  from  the  waters  below.  But  dark- 
ness descends  for  the  thii-d  time  upon  the  seer,  for  the 
evening  and  the  morning  have  completed  the  second  day. 

Yet  again  the  light  rises  under  a  canopy  of  cloud  ;  but 
the  scene  has  changed,  and  there  is  no  longer  an  unbroken 
expanse  of  sea.  The  white  surf  breaks,  at  the  distant  hori- 
zon, on  an  insulated  reef,  formed  mayhap  by  the  Silurian  or 
Old  Red  coral  zoophytes  ages  before,  during  the  bygone 
yesterday ;  and  beats  in  long  lines  of  foam,  nearer  at  hand, 
against  a  Ioav,  winding  shore,  the  seaward  barrier  of  a 
widely  spread  country.  For  at  the  Divine  command  the 
land  has  arisen  from  the  deep,  —  not  inconspicuously  and  in 
scattered  islets,  as  at  an  earlier  time,  but  in  extensive  though 
flat  and  marshy  continents,  little  raised  over  the  sea  level ; 
and  a  yet  further  fiat  has  covered  them  with  the  great  car- 
boniferous flora.  The  scene  is  one  of  mighty  forests  of 
cone-bearing  trees,  —  of  palms,  and  tree-ferns,  and  gigantic 
club  mosses,  on  the  opener  slopes,  and  of  great  reeds  clus- 
tering by  the  sides  of  quiet  lakes  and  dark  rolling  rivers. 
There  is  deep  gloom  in  the  recesses  of  the  thicker  woods, 
and  low  thick  mists  creep  along  the  dank  marsh  or  sluggish 
stream.  But  there  is  a  general  lightening  of  the  sky  over 
head ;  as  the  day  declines,  a  redder  flush  than  had  hitherto 
lighted  up  the  prospect  falls  athwart  fern  covered  bank  and 
long  withdrawing  glade.  And  while  the  fourth  evening 
has  fallen  on  the  prophet,  he  becomes  sensible,  as  it  wears 
on,  and  the  fourth  dawn  approaches,  that  yet  another  change 
has  taken  place.     The  Creator  has  spoken,  and  the  stars 


OF    CREATION.  209 

look  ont  from  openings  of  deep  unclouded  blue ;  and  as  day- 
rises,  and  tlie  planet  of  morning  pales  in  the  cast,  the  broken 
cloudlets  are  transmuted  from  bronze  into  gold,  and  anon 
the  gold  becomes  fire,  and  at  length  the  glorious  sun  arises 
out  of  the  sea,  and  enters  on  his  course  rejoicing.  It  is  a 
brilliant  day ;  the  waves,  of  a  deeper  and  softer  blue  than 
before,  dance  and  sparkle  in  the  light ;  the  earth,  with  little 
else  to  attract  the  gaze,  has  assumed  a  garb  of  brighter 
green ;  and  as  the  sun  declines  amid  even  richer  glories  than 
those  which  had  encircled  his  rising,  the  moon  appears  full 
orbed  in  the  east,  —  to  the  human  eye  the  second  great 
himinary  of  the  heavens,  —  and  climbs  slowly  to  the  zenith 
as  night  advances,  shedding  its  mild  radiance  on  land  and 
sea. 

Again  the  day  breaks ;  the  prospect  consists,  as  before, 
of  land  and  ocean.  There  arc  great  pine  woods,  reed- 
covered  swamps,  wide  plains,  winding  rivers,  and  broad 
lakes ;  and  a  bright  sun  shines  over  all.  But  the  landscape 
derives  its  interest  and  nox^elty  from  a  feature  unmarked 
before.  Gigantic  birds  stalk  along  the  sands,  or  wade  fiir 
into  the  water  in  quest  of  their  ichthyic  food  ;  while  birds 
of  lesser  size  float  upon  the  lakes,  or  scream  discordant  in 
hovering  flocks,  thick  as  insects  in  the  calm  of  a  summer 
evening,  over  the  narrower  seas,  or  brighten  with  the  sunlit 
gleam  of  their  wings  the  thick  woods.  And  ocean  has  its 
monsters :  great  "  tanninim "  tempest  the  deep,  as  they 
heave  their  huge  bulk  over  the  surface,  to  inhale  the  life- 
sustaining  air;  and  out  of  their  nostrils  goeth  smoke,  as 
out  of  a  "  seething  pot  or  ciiuldron."  Monstrous  creatures, 
armed  in  massive  scales,  haunt  the  rivers,  or  scour  the  flat 
rank  meadows ;  earth,  air,  and  water  are  charged  with 
animal  life  ;  and  the  sun  sets  on  a  busy  scene,  in  which  un- 
erring instinct  pursues  unremittingly  its  few  simple  ends, — 
the  support  and  preservation  of  the  indixidual,  the  propa^ 
18* 


210  THE   MOSAIC    VISION    OF    CREATION- 

gation  of  the  species,  and  the  protection  and  maintenance 
of  the  young. 

Again  the  night  descends,  for  the  fifth  day  has  closed ; 
and  mornincc  breaks  on  the  sixth  and  last  dav  of  creation. 
Cattle  and  beasts  of  the  fields  graze  on  the  plains ;  the 
thick-skinned  rhinoceros  wallows  in  the  marshes  ;  the  squat 
hippopotamus  rustles  among  the  reeds,  or  plunges  sullenly 
into  the  river;  great  herds  of  elephants  seek  their  food 
amid  the  young  herbage  of  the  woods ;  while  animals  of 
fiercer  nature,  —  the  lion,  the  leopard,  and  the  bear, — 
harbor  in  deep  caves  till  the  evening,  or  lie  in  wait  for 
their  prey  amid  tangled  thickets,  or  beneath  some  broken 
bank.  At  length,  as  the  day  wanes  and  the  shadoAvs 
lengthen,  man,  the  responsible  lord  of  creation,  formed  in 
God's  own  image,  is  introduced  upon  the  scene,  and  the 
work  of  creation  ceases  forever  upon  the  earth,  Tlie  night 
falls  once  more  upon  the  prospect,  and  there  dawns  yet 
another  mon-ow, — the  morrow  of  God's  rest, —  that  Divine 
Sabbath  in  which  there  is  no  more  creative  labor,  and 
which,  "blessed  and  sanctified"  beyond  all  the  days  that 
had  gone  before,  has  as  its  special  object  the  moral  eleva- 
tion and  final  redemption  of  man.  And  over  it  no  evening 
is  represented  in  the  record  as  falling,  for  its  special  work 
is  not  yet  complete.  Such  seems  to  have  been  the  sublime 
panorama  of  creation  exhibited  in  vision  of  old  to 

"  The  shepherd  who  first  taught  the  chosen  seed. 
In  the  beginning  how  the  heavens  and  earth 
Rose  out  of  chaos; " 

and,  rightly  understood,  I  know  not  a  single  scientific  truth 
that  militates  against  even  the  minutest  or  least  prominent 
of  its  details. 


LECTURE   FIFTH. 

GEOLOGY  IN  ITS  BEARINGS  ON  THE  TWO  THEOLGGIES 

PART  I. 

The  science  of  the  geologist  seems  destined  to  exert  a 
marked  influence  on  that  of  the  natural  theologian.  For 
not  only  does  it  greatly  add  to  the  materials  on  Avhich  the 
natural  theologian  founds  his  deductions,  by  adding  to  the 
organisms,  plant  and  animal,  of  the  present  creation  the 
extinct  organisms  of  the  creations  of  the  past,  with  all 
their  extraordinary  display  of  adaptation  and  design  ;  but 
it  affords  him,  besides,  materials  peculiar  to  itself,  in  the 
history  which  it  furnishes  both  of  the  appearance  of  these 
organisms  in  time,  and  of  the  wonderful  order  in  which 
they  were  chronologically  arranged.  Not  only — to  borrow 
from  Paley's  illustration  —  does  it  enable  him  to  argue  on 
the  old  grounds,  from  the  contrivance  exhibited  in  the 
icatch  found  on  the  moor,  that  the  watch  could  not  have 
lain  upon  the  moor  forever ;  but  it  establishes  further,  on 
different  and  more  direct  evidence,  that  there  was  a  time 
when  absolutely  the  watch  was  not  there  ;  nay,  further,  so 
to  speak,  that  there  Avas  a  previous  time  in  which  no 
watches  existed  at  all,  but  only  water  clocks ;  yet,  further, 
that  there  was  a  time  in  which  there  were  not  even  water 
clocks,  but  only  sundials ;  and  further,  an  earlier  time  still 
in  which  sundials  were  not,  nor  any  measurers  of  time  of 
any  kind.  And  this  is  distinct  ground  from  that  urged  by 
Paley.    For,  besides  holding  that  each  of  these  contrivances 


212  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

must  have  had  in  turn  an  originator  or  contriver,  it  adds 
historic  fact  to  philosophic  inference.  Geology  takes  up  the 
master  volume  of  the  greatest  of  the  natural  theologians, 
and,  after  scanning  its  many  apt  instances  of  palpable 
design,  drawn  from  the  mechanism  of  existing  plants  and 
animals,  authoritatively  decides  that  not  one  of  these  plants 
or  animals  had  begun  to  be  in  the  times  of  the  Chalk  ;  nay, 
that  they  all  date  their  origin  from  a  period  posterior  to 
that  of  the  Eocene.  And  the  fact  is,  of  course,  corrobora- 
tive of  the  inference.  "That  well  constructed  edifice," 
says  the  natural  theologian,  "  cannot  be  a  mere  lusus 
natiirce,  or  chance  combination  of  stones  and  wood  ;  it 
must  have  been  erected  by  a  builder."  "Yes,"  remarks 
the  geologist,  "  it  was  erected  some  time  during  the  last 
nine  years.  I  passed  the  way  ten  years  ago,  and  saw  only 
a  blank  space  Avhere  it  now  stands."  Nor  does  the  estab- 
lished fact  of  an  absolute  beginning  of  organic  being  seem 
more  pregnant  with  important  consequences  to  the  science 
of  the  natural  theologian  than  the  fact  of  the  peculiar  order 
in  which  they  begin  to  be. 

The  importance  of  the  now  demonstrated  fact,  that  all 
the  living  organisms  which  exist  on  earth  had  a  begin- 
ning, and  that  a  time  was  Avhen  they  were  not,  will  be  best 
appreciated  by  those  who  know  how  much,  and,  it  must  be 
added,  how  unsuccessfully,  writers  on  the  evidences  have 
labored  to  convict  of  an  absurdity,  on  this  special  head, 
the  atheistic  assertoi-s  of  an  infinite  series  of  beings. 
Even  Robert  Hall  (in  his  famous  Sermon  on  Modern 
Infidelity)  could  but  play,  when  he  attempted  grappling 
with  the  subject,  upon  the  words  time  and  eternity^  and 
strangely  argue,  that  as  each  member  of  an  infinite  series 
must  have  begun  in  time^  while  the  succession  itself  was 
etertial^  it  was  palpably  absurd  to  ask  us  to  believe  in  a 
succession  of  beings  that  was  thus  infinitely  earlier  than 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  213 

any  of  the  beings  themselves  whicli  composed  the  succes- 
sion. And  Bentley,  more  perversely  ingenious  still,  could 
assert,  that  as  each  of  the  individuals  in  an  infinite  series 
must  have  consisted  of  many  parts,  —  that  as  each  man 
in  such  a  series,  for  instance,  must  have  had  ten  fingers 
and  ten  toes,  —  it  Mas  palpably  absurd  to  ask  us  to  believe 
in  an  infinity  which  thus  comprised  many  infinities,  —  ten 
infinities  of  fingers,  for  example,  and  ten  infinities  of  toes. 
The  infidels  had  the  better  in  this  part  of  the  argument. 
It  was  surely  easy  enough  to  show  against  the  great 
preacher,  on  the  one  hand,  that  time  in  such  a  question  is 
but  a  mere  word  that  means  simply  a  certain  limited  or 
definite  peiiod  which  had  a  beginning,  whereas  eternity 
means  an  unliniited  and  undefinable  period  which  had  no 
beginning;  —  that  his  seeming  argument  was  no  argument, 
but  merely  a  sort  of  verbal  play  on  this  difference  of  sig- 
nification in  the  w'ords ;  —  further,  that  man  could  conceive 
of  an  infinite  series,  whether  extended  in  infinite  space,  or 
subsisting  in  infinite  time,  just  as  well  as  he  could  conceive 
of  any  other  infinity,  and  in  the  same  way ;  and  that  the 
only  mode  of  disproving  the  possibility  of  such  a  series 
would  be  to  show,  what  of  course  cannot  be  shown,  that  in 
conceiving  of  it  in  the  progressive  mode  in  which,  accord- 
ing to  Locke,  man  can  alone  conceive  of  the  infinite  or 
the  eternal,  there  would  be  a  point  reached  at  which  it 
would  be  impossible  for  him  to  go  on  adding  millions  on 
millions  to  the  previous  sum.  The  symbolic  "  ad  injlnitmn'''' 
could  be  made  as  adequately  representative  in  the  case  of 
an  infinite  series  of  men  or  animals  in  unlimited  time,  as  of 
an  infinite  series  of  feet  or  inches  in  unlimited  space,  or  of 
an  infinite  series  of  hours  or  minutes  in  the  past  eternity. 
And  as  for  Bentley,  on  the  other  hand,  he  ought  surely  to 
have  known  that  all  infinities  are  not  equal,  seeing  that 
Newton  had  expressly  told  him  so  in  the  second  of  his 


214  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

four  famous  letters ;  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  one  infinity 
may  be  not  only  ten  times  greater  than  another  mfinity, 
bnt  even  infinitely  greater  than  another  infinity ;  and  that 
so  the  conception  of  an  infinity  of  men  possessed  of  ten 
infinities  of  fingers  and  toes  is  in  no  respect  an  absurdity. 
Of  the  three  infinities  possible  in  space,  the  second  is 
infinitely  greater  than  the  first,  and  the  third  infinitely 
greater  than  the  second.  A  line  infinitely  jDroduced  is 
capable  of  being  divided  into  —  that  is,  consists  of — an 
infinity  of  given  parts ;  a  plane  infinitely  extended  is 
capable  of  being  divided  into  an  infinity  of  infinitely 
divisible  lines ;  and  a  cube,  that  is,  a  solid,  infinitely  ex- 
panded, is  capable  of  being  divided  into  an  infinity  of 
infinitely  divisible  planes.  In  fine,  metaphysic  theology 
furnishes  no  argument  against  the  infinite  series  of  the 
atheist.  But  geology  does.  Every  plant  and  animal  that 
now  lives  upon  earth  began  to  be  during  the  great  Tertiary 
period,  and  had  no  place  among  the  plants  and  animals  of 
the  great  Secondary  division.  We  can  trace  several  of 
our  existing  qiiadruj^eds,  such  as  the  badgei",  the  hare,  the 
fox,  the  red  deer,  and  the  wild  cat,  up  till  the  earlier  times 
of  the  Pleistocene ;  and  not  a  few  of  our  existing  shells, 
such  as  the  great  pccten,  the  edible  oyster,  the  whelk,  and 
the  Pelican's-foot  shell,  up  till  the  greatly  earlier  times  of 
the  Coraline  Crag.  But  at  certain  definite  lines  in  the 
deposits  of  the  past,  representative  of  certain  points  in  the 
course  of  time,  the  existing  mammals  and  molluscs  cease  to 
appear,  and  we  find  their  places  occupied  by  other  mam- 
mals and  molluscs.  Even  such  of  our  British  shells  as 
seem  to  have  enjoyed  as  species  the  longest  term  of  life 
cannot  be  traced  beyond  the  times  of  the  Pliocene  deposits. 
We  detect  their  remains  in  a  perfect  state  of  keeping  in 
almost  every  shell-bearing  bed,  till  we  reach  the  Red  and 
Coraline  Crags,  where  we  find    hem  for  the  last  time ;  and, 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  215 

on  passing  into  older  and  deeper  lying  beds,  we  see  their 
places  taken  by  other  shells,  of  species  altogether  distinct. 
The  very  common  shell  Purpura  Icqyillus^  for  instance,  \^ 
found  in  oi;r  raised  beaches,  in  our  Clyde  beds,  in  our 
boulder  clays  and  mammaliferous  crags,  and,  finally,  in  the 
Red  Crag,  beyond  which  it  fails  to  appear.  And  such  also 
is  the  history  of  the  common  edible  mussel  and  common 
periwinkle ;  whereas  the  common  edible  cockle,  and  com- 
mon edible  pecten  {P.  opercxdaris)  occur  not  only  in  all 
these  successive  beds,  but  in  the  Coral  Crag  also.  They 
are  older  by  a  whole  deposit  than  their  present  contempo- 
raries, the  mussel  and  periwinkle ;  and  these,  in  turn,  seem 
of  older  standing  than  shells  such  as  Murex  erinacens^  that 
has  not  been  traced  beyond  the  times  of  the  mammalifer- 
ous crag,  or  than  shells  such  as  &crohicidaria  piperata^  that 
has  not  been  detected  in  more  ancient  deposits  than  raised 
sea  beaches  of  the  later  periods,  and  the  elevated  bottoms 
of  old  estuaries  and  lagoons.  We  thus  know,  that  in 
certain  periods,  nearer  or  more  remote,  all  our  existing 
molluscs  began  to  exist,  and  that  they  had  no  existence 
during  the  previous  periods  ;  which  were,  however,  richer 
in  animals  of  the  same  great  moUuscan  group  than  the 
present  time.  Our  British  group  of  recent  marine  shells 
foils  somewhat  short  of  four  hundred  species ;  *  whereas 
the  group  characteristic  of  the  older  Miocene  deposits, 
largely  developed  in  those  districts  of  France  which  bor- 
der on  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  and  more  sparingly  in  the  south 
of  England,  near  Yarmouth,  comprises  more  than  six 
hundred  species.  Nearly  an  equal  number  of  still  older 
shells  have  been  detected  in  a  single  deposit  of  the  Paris 

*  Forbes  and  Hanley  enumerate  one  hundred  and  sixty  bivalves,  and 
two  hundred  and  thirty-two  univalves, — in  all  three  hundred  and  ninety- 
two  species,  as  tlw  only  known  shell-bearing  molluscs  of  the  existing  Brit- 
ish seas. 


216  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

basin,  —  the  Calcaire  grossier;  and  a  good  many  more  in 
a  more  ancient  formation  still,  the  London  Clay.  On 
entering  the  Chalk,  Ave  find  a  yet  older  group  of  shells, 
wholly  unlike  any  of  the  preceding  ones ;  and  in  the  Oolite 
and  Lias  yet  other  and  different  groups.  And  thus  group 
preceded  group  throughout  all  the  Tertiary,  Secondary, 
and  Palaeozoic  periods ;  some  of  them  remarkable  for  the 
number  of  species  which  they  contained,  others  for  the 
profuse  abimdance  of  their  individual  specimens,  until, 
deep  in  the  rocks  at  the  base  of  the  Silurian  system,  we 
detect  what  seems  to  be  the  primordial  group,  beneath 
which  only  a  single  animal  organism  is  known  to  occur,  — ■ 
the  Oldhamia  antiqua^  —  a  plant-like  zoophyte, ♦akin  ap- 
parently to  some  of  our  recent  sertularia.  (See  fig.  5, 
page  48.)  Each  of  the  extinct  groups  had,  we  find,  a 
beginning  and  an  end ;  —  there  is  not  in  the  wide  domain 
of  physical  science  a  more  certain  fact ;  and  every  species 
of  the  group  which  now  exists  had,  like  all  their  predeces- 
sors on  the  scene,  their  beginning  also.  The  "infinite 
series "  of  the  atheists  of  former  times  can  have  no  place 
in  modern  science :  all  organic  existences,  recent  or  extinct, 
vegetable  or  animal,  have  had  their  beginning;  —  there 
was  a  time  when  they  were  not.  The  geologist  can  indi- 
cate that  time,  if  not  by  years,  at  least  by  periods,  and 
show  Avhat  its  relations  were  to  the  periods  that  went 
before  and  that  came  after ;  and  as  it  is  equally  a  recog- 
nized truth  on  both  sides  of  the  controversy,  that  as  some- 
thing now  exists,  something  must  have  existed  forever,  and 
as  it  must  now  be  not  less  surely  recognized,  that  that  some- 
thing was  not  the  race  of  man,  nor  yet  any  other  of  the 
many  races  of  man's  predecessors  or  contemporaries,  the 
question,  What  then  was  that  something?  comes  with  a 
point  and  directness  which  it  did  not  possess  at  any  former 
time.     By  what,  or  through  whom,  did   these  races  of 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  217 

nicely  organized  plants  and  animals  begin  to  be  ?  Hith- 
erto at  least  there  has  been  but  one  reply  to  the  question 
originated  on  the  skeptical  side.  All  these  races,  it  is  said, 
have  been  developed^  in  the  long  coiirse  of  ages,  into  what 
they  now  are,  as  the  young  animal  is  developed  in  the 
Avomb,  or  the  young  plant  is  developed  from  the  seed. 
Topsy,  in  the  novel,  "  'spected  that  she  was  not  made,  but 
growed ; "  and  the  only  class  of  opponents  which  the 
geological  theist  finds  in  the  field  which  his  science  has  laid 
open  to  the  Avorld  is  a  class  that  hold  by  the  philosophy  of 
Topsy. 

LetjueJjLi'iefly  remark  regarding  this  development  hypo- 
thesis, with  which  I  have  elsewhere  dealt  at  considerable 
length,  that  while  the  facts  of  the  geologist  are  demonstra- 
bly such,  that  is,  truths  capable  of  proof,  the  hypothesis  is 
a  mere  dream,  unsupported  by  a  sliadoAV  of  evidence.  A 
man  of  a  lively  imagination  could  no  doubt  originate  many 
such  dreams ;  nay,  we  know  that  in  the  dark  ages  dreams 
ofthe  kind  were  actually  originated.  The  Anser  Bernicla^ 
or  barnacle  goose,  a  common  winter  visitant  of  our  coasts, 
was  once  believed  to  be  developed  out  of  decaying  wood 
lonsr  submerged  in  sea  water ;  and  one  of  our  commonest 
cirripedes  or  barnacles,  Lepas  anatifera,  still  bears,  in  its 
specific  name  of  the  goose-producing  kj^as,  evidence  that 
it  was  the  creature  specially  recognized  by  our  ancestors  as 
the  half-developed  goose.  As  if  in  memory  of  this  old 
development  legend,  the  bird  still  bears  the  name  of  the 
barnacle,  and  the  barnacle  of  the  bird  ;  and  we  know  fur- 
ther, that  very  intelligent  men  for  their  age,  such  as 
Gerardes  the  herbalist  (1597),  and  Hector  Boece  the  his- 
torian (1524),  both  examined  these  shells,  and,  knowing 
but  little  of  comparative  anatomy,  were  satisfied  that  the 
animal  within  was  the  partially  developed  embi-yo  of  a 
fowl.  Such  was  one  of  the  fabler  gravely  credited  as  .a 
19 


218  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

piece  of  natural  history  in  Britain  about  three  centuries 
ago,  and  such  was  the  kind  of  evidence  by  which  it  was 
supjiorted.  And  we  know  that  the  followers  of  Epicurus 
received  from  their  master,  without  apparent  suspicion, 
fables  still  more  extravagant,  and  that  wanted  even  such  a 
shadow  of  proof  to  support  them  as  satisfied  the  herbalist 
and  the  historian.  The  Epicureans  at  least  professed  to 
believe  that  the  earth,  after  spontaneously  producing  herbs 
and  trees,  began  to  produce  in  great  numbers  mushroom- 
like  bodies,  that,  Avheu  they  came  to  maturity,  burst  open, 
giving  egress  each  to  a  young  animal,  which  proved  the 
founder  of  a  race  ;  and  that  thus,  in  succession,  all  the 
members  of  the  animal  kingdom  Avere  ushered  into  exist- 
ence. But  whether  the  dream  be  that  of  the  Epicureans 
of  classic  times,  or  that  of  the  naturalists  of  the  middle 
ages,  or  that  of  the  Lamarckians  of  our  own  days,  it  is 
equally  a  dream,  and  can  have  no  place  assigned  to  it 
among  either  the  solid  facts  or  the  sober  deductions  of 
science.  Nay,  the  dream  of  the  Lamarckians  labors  under 
a  special  disadvantage,  from  which  the  dreams  of  the  others 
are  free.  If  some  modern  Boece  or  Epicurus  were  to  assert 
that  at  certain  definite  periods,  removed  from  fifteen  to 
fifty  thousand  years  from  the  present  time,  all  our  existing 
animals  were  developed  from  decaying  wood,  or  from  a 
wonderful  kind  of  mushrooms  that  the  earth  produced  only 
once  every  ten  thousand  years,  the  assertion,  if  incapable 
of  proof,  would  be  at  least  equally  incapable  of  being  dis- 
proven.  But  when  the  Lamarckian  aftirms  that  all  our 
recent  species  of  plants  and  animals  were  developed  out 
of  previously  existing  plants  and  animals  of  sj)ecies  entirely 
difierent,  he  aflirms  what,  if  true,  would  be  capable  of 
proof;  and  so,  if  it  cannot  be  proven,  it  is  only  because  it 
is  not  true.  The  trilobites  have  been  extinct  ever  since 
,    the  times  of  the  Mountain  Limestone ;  and  yet,  by  series 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES  .  219 

of  specimens,  the  individual  development  of  certain  species 
of  this  family,  almost  from  the  extrusion  of  the  animal  from 
the  egg  until  the  attainment  of  its  lull  size,  has  been  satis- 
factorily shown.  By  specimen  after  specimen  has  every 
stage  of  growth  and  every  degree  of  development  been  ex- 
emplified ;  and  the  Pala3ontologist  has  come  as  thoroughly 
to  know  the  creatures,  in  consequence,  under  their  various 
changes  from  youth  to  age,  as  if  they  had  been  his  contem- 
poraries, and  had  grown  up  under  his  eye.  And  had  our 
existing  species,  vegetable  and  animal,  been  derived  from 
other  species  of  the  earlier  periods,  it  Avould  have  been 
equally  possible  to  demonstrate,  by  a  series  of  specimens, 
their  relationship.  Let  us  again  instance  the  British  shells. 
Losing  certain  species  in  each  of  the  older  and  yet  older 
deposits  at  which  we  successively  arrive,  w^e  at  length 
reach  the  Red  and  Coraline  Crags,  where  we  find,  mingled 
with  the  familiar  forms,  a  large  per  centage  of  forms  now 
extinct ;  then  going  on  to  the  shells  of  the  lower  Miocene, 
more  than  six  himdred  species  appear,  almost  all  of  which 
are  strange  to  us ;  and  then,  passing  to  the  Eocene  shells 
of  the  Calcaire  grossier,  Ave  find  ourselves  among  well  nigh 
as  large  a  group  of  yet  other  and  older  strangers,  not  one 
of  which  we  are  able  to  identify  with  any  shell  now  living 
in  the  British  area.  There  Avould  be  thus  no  lack  of 
materials  for  forming  such  a  genealogy  of  the  British 
shells,  had  they  been  gradually  developed  out  of  the  ex- 
tinct species,  as  that  which  M.  Barrande  has  formed  of  the 
trilobites.  But  no  such  genealogy  can  be  formed.  We 
cannot  link  on  a  single  recent  shell  to  a  single  extinct  one. 
Up  to  a  certain  point  we  find  the  recent  shells  exhibiting 
all  their  present  specific  peculiarities,  and  beyond  that  point 
they  cease  to  appear.  Doxmx  to  a  certain  point  the  extinct 
shells  also  exhibit  all  their  specific  peculiarities,  and  then 
they  disappear  forever.     There  are  no  intermediate  species, 


220  GEOLOGY    IN    £TS    BEARINGS 

— no  connecting  links,  —  no  such  connected  scries  of  speci- 
mens to  be  found  as  enables  us  to  trace  a  trilobite  through 
all  its  metamorphoses  from  youth  to  age.  AU.  geologic 
history  is  full  of  the  beginnings  and  the  ends  of  species,  — 
of  their  first  and  their  last  days ;  but  it  exhibits  no  geneal- 
ogies of  development.  The  Lamai-ckian  sets  himself  to 
grapple,  in  his  dream,  with  the  history  of  all  creation :  we 
awaken  him,  and  ask  him  to  grapple,  instead,  with  the 
history  of  but  a  few  individual  species,  —  with  that  of  the 
mussel  or  the  whelk,  the  clam  or  the  oyster ;  and  we  find 
from  his  helpless  ignorance  and  incapacity  what  a  mere 
pretender  he  is. 

But  while  no  hypothesis  of  development  can  neutralize 
or  explain  away  the  great  geologic  fact,  that  every  true 
species  had  a  beginning  independently,  apparently,  of  every 
preceding  species,  there  was  demonstrably  a  general  prog- 
ress, in  the  course  of  creation,  from  lower  to  higher 
forms,  which  seems  scarce  less  fraught  with  important 
consequences  to  the  natural  theologian  than  this  fact  of 
heguining  itself.  For  while  the  one  fact  effectually  dis- 
poses of  the  "infinite  series"  of  the  atheist,  the  other  fiict 
disposes  scarce  less  effectually  of  those  reasonings  on  the 
skeptical  side  which,  framed  on  the  assumption  that  creation 
is  a  "singular  effiect,"  —  an  effect  without  duplicate, — have 
been  employed  in  urging,  that  from  that  one  effect  only 
can  we  know  aught  regarding  the  producing  cause.  Know- 
ing of  the  cause  from  but  the  effect,  and  having  txi^erience 
of  but  one  effect,  we  cannot  rationally  hold,  it  has  been 
argued,  that  the  producing  cause  could  have  originated 
effects  of  a  higher  or  more  perfect  kind.  The  creation 
which  it  produced  we  know ;  but,  having  no  other  measure 
of  its  power,  we  cannot  regard  it,  it  has  been  contended,  as 
equal  to  the  production  of  a  better  or  nobler  creation,  or 
of  com'se  hold  that  it  could  originate  such  a  state  of  things 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  221 

as  that  perfect  future  state  which  faitli  delights  to  contem- 
plate. It  has  been  well  said  of  the  author  of  this  ingenious 
argument,  —  by  for  the  most  sagacious  of  the  skeptics,  — 
that  if  we  admit  his  premises  we  shall  find  it  difficult  indeed 
to  set  aside  liis  conclusions.  And  how,  in  this  case,  does 
geology  deal  with  his  premises  ?  By  opening  to  us  the 
history  of  the  remote  past  of  our  planet,  and  inti-oducing 
us,  through  the  present,  to  former  creations,  it  breaks 
down  that  singularity  of  effect  on  which  he  built,  and  for 
one  creation  gives  us  many.  It  gives  us  exactly  that 
which,  as  he  truly  argued,  his  contemporaries  had  not, — \ 
an  (j'perience  in  creations.  And  let  us  mark  how,  applied , ' 
to  each  of  these  in  succession,  his  argument  Avould  tell. 

There  Avas  a  time  when  life,  animal  or  vegetable,  did 
not  exist  on  our  planet,  and  when  all  creation,  from  its 
centre  to  its  circumference,  was  but  a  creation  of  dead 
matter.  What,  in  that  early  age,  would  have  been  the 
effect  of  the  argument  of  Hume?  Simply  this,  —  that 
though  the  producing  Cause  of  all  that  appeared  was 
competent  to  the  formation  of  gases  and  earths,  metals 
and  minerals,  it  would  be  unphilosophic  to  deem  him 
adequate  to  the  origination  of  a  single  plant  or  animal, 
even  to  that  of  a  spore  or  of  a  monad.  Ages  pass  by,  and 
the  Palaeozoic  creation  is  ushered  in,  with  its  tall  araucarians 
and  pines,  its  highly  organized  fishes,  and  its  reptiles  of 
comparatively  low  standing.  And  how  now,  and  with 
what  effect,  does  the  argument  apply  ?  It  is  now  rendered 
evident,  that  in  the  earlier  creation  the  producing  Cause 
had  exerted  but  a  portion  of  his  power,  and  that  he  could 
have  done  greatly  more  than  he  actually  did,  seeing  that 
we  now  find  him  adequate  to  the  origination  of  vitality  and 
organization  in  its  two  great  kingdoms,  plant  and  animal. 
But,  still  confining  ourselves  with  cautious  skepticism  within 
the  limits  of  our  argument,  we  contmue  to  hold  that,  as 
19*  / 


222  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

fishes  of  a  high  and  reptiles  of  a  low  order,  with  trees  of 
the  cone-bearing  family,  are  the  most  perfect  specimens  of 
their  respective  classes  which  the  producing  Cause  has 
originated,  it  Avould  be  rash  to  hold,  in  the  absence  of 
proof,  that  he  could  originate  aught  higher  or  more 
perfect.  And  now,  as  yet  other  ages  pass  away,  the 
creation  of  the  great  Secondary  diA'ision  takes  the  place  of 
that  of  the  vanished  Palaeozoic ;  and  we  find  in  its  few 
dicotyledonous  plants,  in  its  reptiles  of  highest  standing,  in 
its  great  birds,  and  in  its  some  two  or  three  humble  mar- 
supial mammals,  that  in  the  previous,  as  in  the  earlier 
creation,  the  producing  Cause  had  been,  if  I  may  so  express 
myself,  working  greatly  lander  his  strength,  and  that  in  this 
third  creation  we  have  a  still  higher  display  of  his  potency. 
"With  some  misgivings,  however,  wo,  again  apply  our  argu- 
ment. And  now  yet  another  creation,  —  that  of  the  Ter- 
tiary period,  with  its  noble  forests  of  dicotyledonous  trees 
and  its  sagacious  and  gigantic  mammals,  —  rises  ujDon  the 
scene ;  and  as  our  experience  in  creations  has  now  become 
very  considerable,  and  as  Ave  have  seen  each  in  succession 
higher  than  that  which  preceded  it,  we  find  that,  notwith- 
standing our  assumed  skepticism,  we  had,  compelled  by 
one  of  the  most  deeply  seated  instincts  of  our  nature,  been 
secretly  anticipating  the  advance  which  the  new  state  of 
tilings  actually  realizes.  But  applying  the  argument  once 
more,  we  at  least  assume  to  hold,  that  as  the  sagacious 
elephant  is  the  highest  example  of  animal  life  yet  produced 
by  the  originating  Cause,  it  would  be  unphilosophic  to 
deem  him  capable  of  producing  a  higher  example.  And, 
while  Ave  are  thus  reasoning,  man  appears  upon  creation,  — 
a  creature  immeasurably  superior  to  all  the  others^  and 
Avhose  A'ery  nature  it  is  to  make  use  of  his  expeiience  of 
the  past  for  his  guidance  in  the  future.  And  if  that  only 
be  solid  experience  or  just  reasoning  Avhich  enables  us  truly 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  223 

to  anticipate  the  events  which  are  to  come,  and  so  to  make 
provision  for  tlicm ;  and  it'  that  experience  be  not  soUd, 
and  that  reasoning  not  just,  which  would  serve  but  to 
darken  our  discernment,  and  prevent  us  from  correctly 
predicating  the  cast  and  complexion  of  coming  events ; 
wliat  ouglit  to  be  our  decision  regarding  an  argument 
Avhich,  had  it  been  employed  in  each  of  the  vanished 
creations  of  the  past,  would  have  liad  but  the  eifect  of 
arresting  all  just  anticipation  regarding  the  immediately 
succeeding  creation,  and  which,  thus  reversing  the  main 
end  and  object  of  philosophy,  would  render  the  philoso- 
pher who  clung  to  it  less  sagacious  in  divining  the  future 
than  even  the  ordinary  man  ?  But,  in  truth,  the  existing 
premises,  wholly  altered  by  geologic  science,  are  no  longer 
those  of  Hume.  The  footprint  on  the  sand  —  to  refer  to 
his  happy  illustration  —  does  not  now  stand  alone.  Instead 
of  one,  we  see  many  footprints,  each  in  turn  in  advance  of 
the  print  behind  it,  and  on  a  higher  level ;  and,  founding 
at  once  on  an  acquaintance  with  the  j^ast,  extended 
throughout  all  the  periods  of  the  geologist,  and  on  that 
instinct  of  our  nature  whose  peculiar  function  it  is  to 
anticipate  at  least  one  creation  more,  we  must  regard  the 
expectation  of  "new  heavens  and  a  new  earth,  Avherein 
dwelleth  righteousness,"  as  not  unphilosophic,  but  as, 
on  the  contrary,  altogether  rational  and  according  to 
experience. 

Such  is  the  bearing  of  geological  science  on  tAvo  of  the 
most  important  questions  that  have  yet  been  raised  in  the 
field  of  natural  theology.  Nor  does  it  bear  much  less 
directly  on  a  controversy  to  which,  during  the  earlier  half 
of  the  last  century,  there  was  no  little  importance  attached 
in  Britain,  and  which  engaged  on  its  opposite  sides  some  of 
the  finest  and  most  vigorous  intellects  of  the  age  and 
country. 


/ 


224  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

The  school  of  infidelity  represented  by  Bolingbroke,  and, 
in  at  least  his  earlier  writings,  by  Soame  Jenyns,  and  which, 
in  a  modified  form,  attained  to  much  popularity  through 
Pope's  famous  "  Essay,"  assigned  to  man  a  comparatively 
inconsiderable  space  in  the  system  of  the  universe.  It 
regarded  him  as  but  a  single  link  in  a  chain  of  mutual  de- 
pendency, —  a  chain  which  would  be  no  longer  an  entire, 
but  a  broken  one,  were  he  to  be  struck  out  of  it,  but  as 
thus  more  important  from  his  position  than  from  his  natui-e 
or  his  powers.  You  will  remember  that  one  of  the  sections 
of  Pope's  first  ei^istle  to  his  "good  St.  John"  is  avowedly 
devoted  to  show  Avhat  he  terms  the  "  absurdity  of  man's 

j  supposing  himself  the  final  cause  of  the  creation;"  and 
though  this  great  master  of  condensed  meaning  and  bril- 

j  liant  point  is  now  less  read  than  he  was  in  the  days  of  our 
grandfathers,  you  will  all  remember  the  elegant  stanzas  in 
which  he  states  the  usual  claims  of  the  species  only  to  ridi- 
cule them.  It  is  human  pride  personified  that  he  represents 
as  exclaiming,  — 

"For  me  kind  Nature  wakes  licr  genial  power, 
Suckles  each  herb,  and  spreads  out  every  flower. 
Annual  for  me  the  grape,  the  rose,  renew 
The  juice  nectarious  and  the  balmy  dew. 
For  me  the  mine  a  thousand  treasures  brings  ; 
For  me  health  gushes  from  a  thousand  springs ; 
Seas  roll  to  waft  me,  suns  to  light  me  rise; 
My  footstool  earth,  my  canopy  the  skies." 

You  will  further  remember  how  the  poet,  after  thus  reduc- 
ing the  claims  and  lowering  the  position  of  the  species,  set 
himself  to  show  that  man,  \'iewed  in  relation  to  the  place 
which  he  occupies,  ought  not  to  be  regarded  as  an  imperfect 
being.  Man  is,  he  said,  as  perfect  as  he  ought  to  be.  And, 
such  being  the  case,  the  Author  of  all,  looking,  it  would 
seem,  very  little  after  him,  has  just  left  him  to  take  care  of 


S 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  225 

himself.  A  cold,  unfeeling  abstraction,  like  the  gods  of  the 
old  Epicurean,  the  Great  First  Cause  of  this  school  is  a  being 

"Who  sees  with  equal  eye,  as  God  of  all, 
A  hero  perish  or  a  spanow  fall ; 
Atoms  or  systems  into  ruin  hurled, 
And  now  a  bubble  burst,  and  now  a  world.'  - 

Such,  assuredly,  was  not  that  God  of  the  New  Testament 
whom  the  Saviour  of  mankind  revealed  to  his  disciples  as 
caring  for  all  his  creatures  of  the  dust,  but  as  caring  most 
for  the  highest  of  all.  "  Are  not  two  sparrows,"  he  said, 
"  sold  for  a  farthing  ?  and  one  of  them  shall  not  fall  to  the 
ground  without  your  Father.  Fear  ye  not,  therefore ;  ye 
are  of  more  value  than  many  sparrows." 

It  was^thajerror  of  this  ingenious  but  very  unsolid  school, 
that  it  regarded  the  mere  order  of  the  universe  as  itself  an 
end  or  iinal  cause.  It  reasoned  respecting  creation,  as  if 
it  would  be  true  philosophy  to  account  for  the  origin  and 
existence  of  some  great  city,  such  as  the  city  of  Washing- 
ton in  the  United  States,  built,  as  Ave  know,  for  purely 
political  purposes,  by  showing  that,  —  as  it  was  remarkable 
for  its  order,  for  the  rectilinear  directness  of  its  streets,  and 
the  rectangularity  of  its  squares,- — it  must  haA'e  been  erected 
simply  to  be  a  j^erfect  embodiment  of  regularity ;  and  to 
urge  further  that,  save  in  their  character  as  component  parts 
of  a  perfect  Avhole,  the  House  of  Representatives  and  the 
mansion  of  the  President  were  of  no  more  intrinsic  import- 
ance, or  no  more  decidedly  the  end  of  the  whole,  than  any 
low  tavern  or  outhouse  in  the  lesser  streets  or  lanes.  The 
destruction  of  either  the  outhouse  or  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives would  equally  form  a  void  in  the  general  plan  of 
the  city,  regarded  as  an  admirably  arranged  whole.  And 
it  was  thus  with  the  grand  scheme  of  creation ;  for, 

"  From  nature's  cliain  whatever  link  we  strike. 
Tenth  or  tenth  thousand,  breaks  the  chain  alike." 


226  GEOLOGY   IN   ITS   BEARINGS 

Kor  is  it  in  other  than  due  keeping  with  such  a  view  of 
creation  that  its  great  Author  should  be  represented  as  a 
cold  abstraction,  without  love  or  regard,  and  equally  indif- 
ferent to  the  man  and  the  sparrow,  to  the  atom  and  the 
planet.     Order  has  respect  to  but  the  relations  of  things  or 
of  beings,  —  not  to  the  things  or  beings  themselves ;  order 
is  the  figure  which,  as  mere  etched  points  or  strokes,  they 
compose,  —  the  legend  which,  as  signs  or  characters,  they 
form ;  and  who  cares  anything  for  the  component  strokes  or 
dots  irrespective  of  the  print,  or  for  the  component  letters 
or  words  apart  from  the  writing?     The  "equal  eye,"  in 
such  a  scheme,  would  of  necessity  be  an  indifferent  one. 
Against  this  strange  doctrine,  though  in  some  measure  coun- 
tenanced by  the  glosses  of  Warburton  in  his  defence  of 
Pope,  the  theologians  protested, — none  of  them,  however, 
more  vigorously  than  Johnson,  in  his  famous  critique  on  the 
"Free  Inquiry"  of  Soame  Jenyns.     Nor  is  it  unmteresting 
to  mark  with  what  a  purely  instmctive  feeling  of  the  right 
some  of  the  better  poets,  whose  "lyre,"  according  to  Cow- 
per,  was  their  "heart,"  protested  against  it  too.    Poor  Gold- 
smith, when  sitting  a  homeless  vagabond  on  the  slopes  of  the 
Alps,  could  exclaim  m  a  greatly  truer  tone  than  that  of  hia 
polished  ^predecessor, — 

"Creation's  heir,  the  world,  the  world  is  mine!" 

And  in  Cowper  himself  we  find  all  Goldsmith's  intense  feel- 
ing of  appropriation,  that  "calls  the  delightful  gcenery  all 
its  own,"  associated 

"  With  worthy  thoughts  of  that  unvaried  love 
That  planned,  and  built,  and  still  upholds,  a  world 
So  clothed  with  beauty,  for  rebellious  man." 

Strange  to  say,  however,  it  is  to  the  higher  exponents  of 
natural  science,  and  in  especial  to  the  geologists,  that  it  has 


ON  THE  TWO  THE OLOG  n<:s.  227 

been  left   to  deal   most  directly  with   the  sophistries  of 
Bolingbrokc  and  Pope. 

Oken,  a  man  quite  as  far  wrong  in  some  points  as  either 
the  poet  or  his  master,  was  the  first  to  remark,  and  this  in 
the  oracnlar,  enigmatical  style  peculiar  to  the  German,  that, 
"  man  is  the  sum  total  of  all  the  animals."  Gifted,  as  all 
allow,  with  a  peculiarly  nice  eye  for  detecting  those  analo- 
gies which  unite  the  animal  world  into  a  harmonious  whole, 
he  remarked,  that  in  one  existence  or  being  all  these  analo- 
gies converge.  Even  the  humbler  students  of  the  heavens 
have  learned  to  find  for  themselves  the  star  of  the  pole,  by 
following  the  direction  indicated  by  what  are  termed  the 
two  pointer  stars  in  the  Great  Bear,  And  to  the  eye  of 
Oken  all  the  groups  of  the  animal  kingdom  formed  a  sphere 
of  constellations,  each  of  which  has  its  pointer  stars,  if  I 
may"so~speak,  turned  towards  man.  Man  occupies,  as  it 
were,  the  central  point  in  the  great  circle  of  being ;  so  that 
those  lines  which  pass  singly  througli  each  of  the  inferior 
animals  stationed  at  its  circumference,  meet  in  him ;  and 
thus,  as  the  focus  in  which  the  scattered  rays  unite,  he  im- 
parts by  his  presence  a  unity  and  completeness  to  creation 
which  it  would  not  possess  were  he  away.  You  will  be 
startled,  however,  by  the  language  in  which  the  German 
embodies  his  view ;  though  it  may  be  not  uninstructive  to 
refer  to  it  in  evidence  of  the  fact  that  a  man  may  be  intel- 
lectually on  the  very  verge  of  truth,  and  yet  for  every  moral 
purpose  infinitely  removed  from  it.  "  Man,"  he  says,  "  is 
God  manifest  in  the  flesh."  And  yet  it  may  be  admitted 
that  there  is  a  certain  loose  sense  in  which  man  is  "  God 
manifest  in  the  flesh."  As  may  be  afterwards  shown,  he  is' 
God's  image  manifested  in  the  flesh ;  and  an  image  or  like- 
ness ^s  a  manifestation  or  making  evident  of  that  which  it 
represents,  whether  it  be  an  image  or  likeness  of  body  or 
of  mind. 


228  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS   BEARINGS 

Not  less  extraordinary,  but  greatly  more  sound  in  their 
application,  are  the  views  of  Professor  Owen,  —  supreme  in 
his  own  special  walk  as  a  comparative  anatomist.  We  find 
him  recognizing  man  as  exemplifying  in  his  structure  the 
perfection  of  that  type  in  wliich,  from  the  earliest  ages, 
nature  had  been  Avorking  with  reference  to  some  future 
development,  and  as  therefore  a  foreordained  existence. 
"The  recognition  of  an  ideal  exemplar  for  the  vertebrated 
animals  proves,"  he  says,  "  that  the  knowledge  of  such  a 
being  as  man  must  have  existed  before  man  appeared.  For 
the  Divine  mind  that  planned  the  ai-chetype  also  foreknew 
all  its  modifications.  The  archetypal  idea  was  manifested 
in  the  flesh  under  divers  modifications,  upon  this  planet, 
long  prior  to  the  existence  of  those  animal  species  that 
N((  actually  exemplify  it."     So  far  Owen.     And  not  less  won- 

'  derful  is  the  conclusion  at  Avhich  Agassiz  has  arrived,  after  a 
survey  of  the  geologic  existences,  more  extended  and  minute, 
in  at  least  the  ichthyic  department,  than  that  of  any  other 
man.  "  It  is  evident,"  we  find  him  saying,  in  the  conclusion 
of  his  recent  work,  "  The  Principles  of  Zoology,"  *  "  that 
there  is  a  manifest  progress  in  the  succession  of  beings  on 
the  surface  of  the  eai'th.  This  progress  consists  in  an 
increasing  similarity  to  the  living  fauna,  and  among  the  ver- 
tebrates, especially  in  their  increasing  resemblance  to  man. 
Btit  this  connection  is   not   the  consequence  of  a  direct 

\    lineage  between  the  faunas  of  different  ages.      There  is 

/^othing  like  parental  descent  connecting  them.     The  fishes 

or  the  Palaeozoic  age  are  in  no  respect  the  ancestors  of  the 

reptiles  of  the  Secondary  age,  nor  does  man  descend  from 

*  Principles  of   Zoology:  touching  the  Structure,  Development, 

•     Distribution,  and  Natural  Arrangement  of  the  Races  of  Animals,  living 

and  extinct.     With  numerous  Illustrations.     For  the  Use  of  Schools  and 

Colleges.    Part  I.,  "  Comparative  Physiology."    By  Louis  Agassiz  and 

Augustus  A.  Gould.    Boston:  Gould  &  Lincoln. 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  229 

the  mammals  whicli  preceded  him  in  the  Tertiary  age.  The 
link  by  which  they  are  connected  is  of  a  higher  and  imma- 
terial nature ;  and  their  connection  is  to  be  sought  in  the 
view  of  the  Creator  himself,  whose  aim  in  forming  the  earth, 
in  allowing  it  to  undergo  the  successive  changes  which 
geology  has  pointed  out,  and  in  creating  successively  all 
the  different  types  of  animals  which  have  passed  away,  icas^ 
to  introduce  man  upon  the  surface  of  our  globe.     IVIan  is 

THE  END  TOWARDS  WHICH  ALL  THE  ANIMAL  CREATION  HAS 
TENDED  FROM  THE  FIRST  APPEARANCE  OF  THE  FIRST  PaL.EO- 

zoic  FISHES."  These,  surely,  are  extraordinary  deductions. 
"  In  thy  book,"  says  the  Psalmist,  "  all  my  members  were 
written,  which  in  continuance  were  fashioned  when  as  yet 
there  was  none  of  them."  And  here  is  natural  science,  by 
the  voice  of  two  of  its  most  distinguished  professors,  saying 
exactly  the  same  thing. 

Of  the  earliest  known  vertebrates,  —  the  placoidal  fishes 
of  the  Upper  Silurian  rocks,  —  we  possess  only  fragments, 
which,  however,  sufficiently  indicate,  from  their  i-esem- 
blance  to  the  corresponding  parts  of  an  existing  shark,  — 
the  cestracion,  —  that  they  belonged  to  fishes  furnished 
with  the  two  pairs  of  fins  now  so  generally  recognized  as 
the  homologues  of  the  fore  and  hinder  limbs  in  quadrupeds. 
With  the  second  earliest  vertebrates,  —  the  ganoids  of  the 
Old  Red  Sandstone,  —  we  are  more  directly  acquainted, 
and  know  that  they  exhibited  the  true  typical  form,  —  a 
vertebral  column  terminating  in  a  brain-protecting  skull; 
and  that,  in  at  least  the  acanth,  celacanth,  and  dipterian 
families,  they  had  the  limb-like  fins.  In  the  upper  parts  of 
the  system  the  earliest  reptiles  leave  the  first  known  traces 
of  the  typical  foot,  with  its  five  digits.  Higher  still  in  one 
of  the  deposits  of  the  Trias  we  are  startled  by  what  seems 
to  be  the  impression  of  a  human  hand  of  an  uncouth 
massive  shape,  but  with  the  thumb  apparently  set  in  oppo- 
20 


230  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

sition,  as  in  man,  to  the  other  fingers ;  we  next  trace  the 
type  upwards  among  the  Avonclermlly  developed  reptiles  of 
the  Secondary  periods  ;  then  among  the  mammals  of  the 
Tertiary  ages,  higher  and  yet  higher  forms  appear;  the 
mute  prophecies  of  the  coming  being  become  with  each 
approach  clearer,  fuller,  more  expressive,  and  at  length 
receive  their  fulfilment  in  the  advent  of  man,  A  double 
meaning  attaches  to  the  term  type  ;  and  hence  some  am- 
biguity in  the  writings  which  have  appeared  on  this  curious 
subject.  Type  means  a  prophecy  embodied  in  symbol ;  it 
means  also  what  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  well  terms  "  one  of 
the  general  forms  of  nature,"  —  a  pattern  form,  from  which 
all  others  in  the  same  class  or  family,  however  numerous, 
are  recognized  as  mere  exceptions  and  aberrations.  But  in 
the  geologic  series  both  meanings  converge  and  become 
one.  The  form  or  number  typical  as  the  general  form  or 
number,  is  found  typical  also  as  a  jyrojyhec-y  of  the  form 
or  number  that  came  at  length  to  be  exemplified  in  the 
deputed  lord  of  creation.  Let  us  in  our  examples  take 
typical  numbers,  as  more  easily  illustrated  without  diagrams 
than  typical  forms. 

There  are  vertebrate  animals  of  the  second  age  of  ichthyic 
existence,  that,  like  the  Pterichthys  and  Coccosteus,  Avere 
furnished  with  but  two  limbs.  The  murainidae  of  recent 
times  have  no  more  ;  at  least  one  of  their  number,  the 
murwna  proper,  wants  limbs  altogether  ;  so  also  do  the 
lampreys.  The  snakes  are  equally  limbless,  save  that  the 
-■v  boas  and  pythons  possess  the  rudiments  of  a  single  pair ; 
and  such  also  is  the  condition,  among  the  amphibia,  of  all 
the^^  known  species  of  Coecilia.  And  yet,  notwithstanding 
the^  exceptional  cases,  the  true  typical  number  of  limbs, 
as  shown  by  a  preponderating  majority  of  the  vertebrates 
of  all  ages  of  the  world,  is  four.  And  this  typical  number 
is  the  human  number.     There  is  as  certainly  a  typical  num- 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  231 

ber  of  digits  too,  as  of  the  limbs  wliicb  bear  them.  The 
excej)tions  are  many.  All  the  species  of  the  horse  genus 
possess  but  a  single  digit ;  the  cattle  family  possess  but  two 
digits,  the  rhinoceros  three  digits,  the  hippopotamus  four 
digits ;  many  animals,  such  as  the  dog  and  cat,  have  but 
four  digits  on  one  pair  of  limbs  and  five  on  the  other  • 
whereas  in  some  of  the  fishes  the  number  of  digits  is 
singularly  great,  —  from  ten  to  twenty  in  most  species,  and 
in  the  rays  from  eighty  to  a  hundred.  And  yet,  as  shown 
in  the  rocks,  in  which,  however,  the  aberrations  appear 
early,  the  true  typical  number  is  five  on  both  the  fore  and 
hinder  limbs.  And  such  is  the  number  in  man.  There  is 
also,  in  at  least  the  mammalia,  a  typical  number  of  vertebrae 
in  the  neck.  The  three-toed  sloth  has  nine  cervical  verte- 
brae ;  the  manati  only  six ;  but  seven  is  the  typical  number. 
And  seven  is  the  human  number  also.  Man,  in  short,  is 
pre-eminently  -  what  a  theologian  Avould  terrn~tbe— ante- 
typical  existence,  —  the  being  in  whom  the  types  meet  and 
ar^  fuTfilled.  And  not  only  do  typical  forms  and  numbers 
of  the  exemplified  character  meet  in  man,  but  there  are  not 
a  few  parts  of  his  framework  which  in  the  inferior  animals 
exist  as  but  mere  symbols,  of  as  little  importance  as  dugs 
in  the  male  animal,  though  they  acquire  significancy  and 
use  in  him.  Such,  for  instance,  are  the  many-jointed  but 
moveless  and  unnecessary  bones  of  which  the  stifi"  inflexible 
fiyi  of  the  dugong  and  the  fore  paw  of  the  mole  consist, 
and  which  exist  in  his  arm  as  essential  portions,  none  of 
which  could  be  wanted,  of  an  exquisitely  flexible  instru- 
ment. In  other  cases,  the  old  types  are  exemplified  serially 
in  the  growth  and  development  of  certain  portions  of  his 
frame.  Such  is  specially  the  case  with  that  all  important 
portion  of  it,  the  organ  of  thought  and  feeling.  The 
human  brain  is  built  up  by  a  Avonderful  process,  during 
which  it  assumes  in  succession  the  form  of  the  brain  of  a 


232  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

fish,  of  a  reptile,  of  a  bird,  of  a  mammiferous  quadruped  •, 
and,  finally,  it  takes  upon  it  its  unique  character  as  a  human 
brain.  Hence  the  remark  of  Oken,  that  "  man  is  the  sum 
total  of  all  the  animals;"  lience,  too,  a  recognition  of  type 
in  the  historij  of  the  successive  vertebral  periods  of  the 
geologist,  symbolical  of  the  history  of  evei-y  indi\idual 
man.  It  is  not  difficult  to  conceive  ho^v,  on  a  subject  of 
such  complexity,  especially  if  approached  in  an  irreverent 
spirit,  grave  mistakes  and  misconceptions  should  take  place. 
Virgil  knew  just  enough  of  Hebrew  prophecy  to  misapply, 
in  his  PolUOy  to  his  great  patron  Octavius,  those  ancient 
predictions  which  foretold  that  in  that  age  the  Messiah  was 

-to  appear.  And  I  am  inclined  to  hold,  that  in  the  more 
ingenious  speculations  of  the  Lamarckians  Ave  have  just  a 
similar  misapplication  of  what,  emboldened  by  the  views 
of  Owen  and  Agassiz,  I  shall  venture  to  term  the  Geologic 
Prophecies. 

I  The  term  is  new,  but  the  idea  which  it  embodies,  though 
it  at  first  existed  rather  as  a  nice  poetic  instinct  than  as  a 
scientifically  based  thought,  is  at  least  as  old  as  the  times 
of  Herder  and  Coleridge.  In  a  passage  quoted  from  the 
rmer  Avriter  by  Dr.  M'Cosh,  in  his  very  masterly  work 
typical  forms,  I  find  the  profound  German  remarking  of 
^trange  resemblances  which  pervade  all  nature,  and 
impart  a  general  imity  to  its  forms,  that  it  would  seem  "  as 
if  on  all  our  earth  the  form-abounding  mother  had  proposed 
to  herself  but  one  type,  —  one  proto-plasma,  —  according 
to  which,  and  for  which,  she  formed  them  all.  Know, 
then,"  he  continues,  "  what  this  form  is.  It  is  the  identical 
one  which  man  also  wears."  And  the  remark  of  Coleridge, 
in  his  "  Aids  to  Reflection,"  is  still  more  definite.  "  Let  us 
carry  us  back  in  spirit,"  he  says,  "  to  the  mysterious  week, 
the  teeming  work  daj's  of  the  Creator  (as  they  rose  in 
VISION   before   the  eye  of  the  inspired  historian)   of  the 


ON    THE   TWO    THEOLOGIES.  233 

operations  of  the  heavens  ancl  of  the  earth,  in  the  day  that 
the  Lord  God  made  the  earth  and  the  heavens.  And  who 
that  watched  their  ways  with  an  understanding  heart  could, 
as  the  vision  evolved  still  advanced  towards  him,  contem- 
plate the  filial  and  loyal  bee,  the  home-building,  wedded, 
and  divorceless  swallow,  and,  above  all,  the  manifoldly 
intelligent  ant  tribes,  with  their  commonwealths  and  con- 
federacies, their  warriors  and  miners,  the  husband  folk  that 
fold  in  their  tiny  flocks  on  the  honey  leaf^  and  the  virgin 
sister  with  the  holy  instincts  of  maternal  hne  detached  and 
in  selfless  purity,  and  not  say  in  liimsellj  Rfhold  the  shadow 
of  approacliing  humanity,  the  sim  rising  from  behind  in  the 
kindling  morn  of  creation?"  There  is  fancy  here;  but  it 
is  that  sagacious  fancy,  vouchsafed  to  only  the  true  p<jet^ 
Avhich  has  so_pften  j)roved  the  pioneer  of  scientific  dis- 
covery, and  which  is  in  reality  more  sober  and  truthful,  in 
the  midst  of  its  apparent  extravagance,  than  the  gravest 
cogitations  of  ordinary  men.  It  is  surely  no  incredible 
thing,  that  lie  who,  in  the  dispensations  of  the  human 
period,  spake  by  t}'pe  and  symbol,  and  who,  when  He 
Avalked  the  earth  in  the  flesh,  taught  in  parable  and 
allegorj%  should  have  also^jspoTien  ^n  the  geologic  ages 
by  prophetic  figures  emljodied  in  the  fomi  and  structure 
of  animals.  Nay,  what  the  poet  imagined,  though  in  a 
somewhat  extreme  form,  the  philosophers  seem  to  be  on 
the  very  eve  of  confirming.  The  foreknown  "archetypal 
idea"  of  Owen,  —  "the  immaterial  link  of  coimection"  of 
all  the  past  with  all  the  present,  which  Agassiz  resolves 
into  the  foreordained  design  of  the  Creator,  —  will  be  yet 
found,  I  cannot  doubt,  to  translate  themselves  into  one 
great  general  truth,  namely,  that  the  Palffiozoic,  Secondary, 
and  Tertiary  dispensations  of  creation  were  charged,  like 
the  patriarchal  and  Mosaic  dispensations  of  grace,  with  the 
20* 


234  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

"  shadows  of  better  things  to  come."  The  advent  of  man 
simply  as  such  was  the  great  event  perfigm-ed  during  the 
old  geologic  ages.  The  advent  of  that  Divine  Man  "who 
hath  abolished  death,  and  brought  life  and  immortality  to 
light,"  was  the  great  event  prefigured  during  the  historic 
ages.  It  is  these  tAvo  grand  events,  equally  portions  of  one 
sublime  scheme,  originated  when  God  took  counsel  with 
himself  in  the  depths  of  eternity,  that  bind  together  past, 
present,  and  future,  —  the  geologic  Avith  the  Patriarchal, 
the  Mosaic,  and  the  Christian  ages,  and  all  together  with 
that  new  heavens  and  new  earth,  the  last  of  many  creations, 
in  Avhich  there  shall  be  "  no  more  death  nor  curse,  but  the 
throne  of  God  and  the  Lamb  shall  be  in  it,  and  his  servants 
shall  serve  him." 

"There  is  absurdity,"  said  Pope,  "in  man's  conceiting 

himself   the   final    cause  of   creation."     Unless,   however, 

!    man  had  the  entire  scheme  of  creation  before  him,  with 

the  further  partially  knoAvn   scheme  of  which  but  a  part 

,     constitutes  the  grand  theme  of  revelation,  how  could  he 

pronoimce    on    the    absurdity  ?     The    knowledge  of   the 

geologist  ascends  no  higher  than  man.     He  sees  all  nature 

j     I     in   the   pre-Adamic   past,  ]>ointing  A^ith   prophetic   finger 

towards  him ;   and  on   even   the  argument   of   Hume,  — 

just   and   solid   within   its   pioper  limits,  —  he   refuses   to 

acquiesce  in  the  unfounded  inference  of  Pope.     In  order 

to  prove  the  absurdity  of  "  man's  conceiting  himself  the 

final  cause  of  creation,"  proof  of  an  ulterior  cause,  —  of 

a  higher  end  and  aim,  —  must  be  adduced;  and  of  aught 

higher  than  man,  the  geologist,  as  such,  knows  nothing. 

Tjjfi  long  vista  opened  up  by  his  science  closes  with  the 

•  deputed   lord    of    creation,  —  with  man  as   he  at  present 

exists ;  and  when,  casting  liimseli*  full  upon  revelation,  the 

vail  is  drawn  aside,  and  an  infinitely  grander  yista  stretches 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  235 

out  before  him  into  the  future,  he  sees  man  —  no  lonirer. 
hoAvever,  the  natural,  but  the  Divine  man  —  occupying 
wEat  is  at  once  its  terminal  point  ajid  its  highest  apex. 
Such  are  some  of  the  bearings  of  geologic  science  on 
the"  science  of  natural  theology.  Geology  has  disposed 
effectually  and  forever  of  the  oft-urged  assumption  of  an 
infinite  series;  it  deals  as  no  other  science  could  have 
dealt  with  the  assertion  of  the  skeptic,  that  creation  is  a 
"  singular  effect ; "  it  casts  a  flood  of  unexpected  light  on 
the  somewhat  obsolete  plai;sibilities  of  Bolingbroke  and 
Jenyns,  that  exhibits  their  utterly  unsolid  character ;  yet 
further,  it  exhibits  in  a  new  aspect  the  argument  founded 
on  design,  and  invests  the  place  and  standing  of  man  in 
creation  with  a  peculiar  significancy  and  importance,  from 
its  relation  to  the  future.  But  on  this  latter  part  of  my 
subject— necessarily  of  considerable  extent  and  multiplicity, 
and  connected  rather  with  revealed  than  Avith  natural 
religion  —  I  must  not  now  expatiate.  I  shall,  however, 
attempt  laying  before  you,  on  some  future  evening,  a  few 
thoughts  on  this  portion  of  the  genei*al  question,  Avhich 
you  may  at  least  find  suggestive  of  othei's,  and  which, 
if  they  fail  to  elicit  new  truths,  may  have  the  eflTect  of 
opening  up  upon  an  old  truth  or  tA\'0  a  few  fresh  avenues 
through  which  to  survey  them.  The  character  of  man 
as  a  fellow-worker  Avith  his  Creator  in  the  material  province 
has  still  to  be  considered  in  the  light  of  geology.  Man 
was  the  first,  and  is  still  the  only  creature  of  whom  we 
know  anythmg,  who  has  set  himself  to  carry  on  and 
improve  the  work  of  the  world's  original  framer,  —  who 
is  a  planter  of  woods,  a  tiller  of  fields,  and  a  keeper  of 
gardens,  —  and  who  carries  on  his  work  of  mechanical 
contrivance  on  obviously  the  same  principles  as  those  on 
which  the  Divine  designer  wrought  of  old,  and  ou  which 


236  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS,    ETC. 

he  -works  still.  It  may  not  be  wholly  unprofitable  to 
acquaint  ourselves,  through  evidence  furnished  by  the 
rocks,  with  the  remarkable  fact,  that  the  Creator  imparted 
to  man  the  Divine  image  before  he  imited  to  man's  the 
Divine  nature. 


LECTURE    SIXTH. 

GEOLOGY  IN  ITS  BEARINGS  ON  THE  TWO  THEOLOGIES. 

PAKT   II. 

Up  till  the  introduction  of  man  upon  our  planet,  the 
humbler  creatures,  liis  predecessors,  formed  but  mere 
figures  in  its  various  landscapes,  and  failed  to  alter  or 
affect  by  their  works  the  face  of  nature.  They  were 
conspicuous,  not  froni  what  they  did.,  but  from  what  they 
tcere.  At  a  very  early  period  reefs  of  coral,  the  M-ork  of 
minute  zoophytes,  whitened  the  shallows  of  the  ocean, 
or  encircled  with  pale,  ever  broadening  frames,  solitary 
islands  green  with  the  shrubs  and  trees  of  extinct  floras; 
but,  though  products  of  the  animal  world,  they  were  not 
built  up  under  the  direction  of  even  an  instinctive  intelli- 
gence, but  were  as  entirely  the  results  of  a  vegetative 
process  of  mere  growth  as  the  forests  or  reed  brakes  of 
the  old  Carboniferous  savannahs.  At  a  later  time  an  aut 
liill  might  be  hei-e  and  there  descried,  rearing  its  squat, 
brown  pyramid  amid  the  recesses  of  some  Oolitic  forest ; 
or,  in  a  period  still  more  recent,  the  dam  of  the  gigantic 
beaver  might  be  seen  extending  its  minute  eye-like  circlet 
of  blue  amid  the  windings  of  some  bosky  ravine  of  the 
Pliocene  age;  or  existing  as  a  little  mound-skirted  pond, 
with  the  rude  half-submerged  cottage  of  the  creature,  its 
architect,  rising  beside  it,  on  some  rivulet  of  the  Pleisto- 
cene. But  how  inconsiderable  such  works,  compared  Avith 
the  wide  extent  of  prospect  in  which  they  were  included ! 


238  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

IIow  entirely  inconspicuoiis  rather,  save  when  placed  in 
the  immediate  foreground  of  the  pictures  into  Avhose 
composition  they  entered !  Not  until  the  introduction 
of  man  upon  earth  do  we  find  a  creature  whose  works 
sensibly  affect  and  modify  the  aspects  of  nature.  But 
when  man  appears,  how  mighty  the  chsnge  which  he 
effects !  Immediately  on  his  creation  he  takes  xmder  liis 
care  the  ACgetable  pi'oductions  of  use  and  show :  it  becomes 
his  business  to  keep  and  dress  a  garden.  He  next  becomes 
a  tiller  of  fields,  then  a  planter  of  vineyards :  here  he  cuts 
down  great  forests ;  there  he  rears  extensive  woods.  He 
makes  himself  places  of  habitation ;  and  busy  cities  spring 
up  as  the  trophies  of  his  diligence  and  skill.  His  labors, 
as  tliey  grow  upon  the  waste,  affect  the  appearance  of  vast 
^jontinents  ;  until  at  length,  from  many  a  hill-to]>  and  tall 
spire,  scarce  a  rood  of  ground  can  be  seen  on  which  he  has 
not  built,  or  sown,  or  planted,  or  around  which  he  has  not 
erected  his  walls  or  reared  his  hedges,  Man,  in  this  great 
department  of  industry,  is  what  none  of  his  predecessors 
upon  the  earth  ever  were,  —  "a  fellow-worker"  with 
the  Creator.  He  is  a  mighty  improver  of  creation.  "We 
recognize  that  as  improvement  which  adapts  nature  more 
thoroughly  to  man's  OAvn  necessities  and  wants,  and  renders 
it  more  pleasing  both  to  his  sense  of  the  aesthetic  and  to  his 
more  material  senses  also.  He  adds  to  the  beauty  of  the 
flowers  Avhich  he  takes  under  his  charge,  —  to  the  delicacy 
and  fertility  of  the  fruits;  the  seeds  of  the  wild  grasses 
become  corn  beneath  his  care ;  the  green  herbs  grow  great 
of  root  or  bulb,  or  bulky  and  succulent  of  top  and  leaf; 
the  wild  produce  of  nature  sports  under  his  hand  ;  the  rose 
and  lily  broaden  their  disks  and  multiply  their  petals ;  the 
harsh  green  crab  swells  out  into  a  delicious  golden-rinded 
apple,  streaked  with  crimson ;  the  productions  of  his 
kitchen   garden,   strangely   metamorphosed    to   serve   the' 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  239 

uses  of  his  tabic,  bear  forms  unknown  to  nature ;  nn  occult 
law  of  change  and  development  inherent  to  these  organ- 
isms meets  in  him  with  the  developing  instinct  and  ability, 
and  they  are  regenerated  under  his  surveillance.  Kor  is 
his  influence  over  many  of  the  animals  less  marked.  The 
habits  which  he  imparts  to  the  parents  become  nature^  in 
his  behalf,  in  their  offspi-ing.  The  dog  acquires,  under  his 
tutelage,  the  virtues  of  fidelity  to  a  master  and  affection  to 
a  friend.  The  ox  and  horse  learn  to  assist  him  in  the 
labors  of  the  fields.  The  udders  of  the  cow  and  goat 
distend  beneath  his  care  far  beyond  the  size  necessary  in 
the  wild  state,  and  supply  him  with  rich  milk,  and  the 
other  various  products  of  the  dairy.  The  fleece  of  the 
sheep  becomes  finer  of  texture  and  longer  of  fibre  in  his 
pens  and  folds ;  and  even  tlie  indocile  silkworm  spins,  in 
his  sheltered  conservatories,  and  among  the  mulberry  trees 
which  he  has  planted,  a  larger,  and  brighter,  and  more 
glistening  cocoon.  Man  is  the  great  creature-Avorker  of 
the  world,  —  its  one  created  being,  that,  taking  up  the 
work  of  the  adorable  Creator,  carries  it  on  to  higher 
results  and  nobler  developments,  and  finds  a  field  for  his 
persevering  ingenuity  and  skill  in  every  province  in  which 
his  Maker  had  expatiated  before  him.  He  is  evidently  — 
to  adopt  and  modify  the  remark  of  Oken  —  God's  image 
"manifest  in  the  flesh." 

Surveyed  from  the  special  point  of  view  furnished  by  this 
peculiar  nature  of  man,  unique  in  creation,  all  the  past  of 
our  planet  divides  into  two  periods ;  —  the  period,  inclusive 
of  every  age  kno-wm  to  the  geologist,  during  which  only  the 
Oi-eator  wrought ;  and  the  period  during  which  man  has 
wrought,  and  to  which  all  human  history  belongs.  In  such 
a  view  we  are  presented  with  two  sets  of  Avorks,  —  those 
of  the  Creator-worker,  and  those  of  the  creature-worker ; 
and  the  vast  fund  of  materials  on  which  the  natural .  theo- 


24:0  GEOLOGY    IX    ITS    BEARINGS 

logian  frnmes  liis  arguments  demonstrjitive  of  design  or 
contrivance,  assumes  a  new  significancy  and  interest  when 
employed  as  evidence  that  tlierc  exists  a  certain  correspond- 
ence of  nature  and  intellect  between  the  two  workers, 
human  and  Divine.  The  ability  of  accomplishing  the  same 
ends  by  the  same  means,  —  in  other  words,  of  thinking  and 
acting  in  the  same  practical  tract,  —  indicates  a  similarity, 
if  not  identity,  of  intellectual  nature.  In  the  Chinese  centre 
of  civilization,  for  instance,  printing,  gunpowder,  the  mari- 
ner's compass,  with  the  various  chemical  and  mechanical 
arts  of  elegant  life,  were  originated  without  concert  with 
the  European  centre  of  civilization,  simply  because  in  China, 
as  in  Europe,  the  same  luiman  faculties,  prompted  by  the 
same  tastes  and  necessities,  had  expatiated  in  the  same 
tracts  of  invention,  and  had,  as  a  consequence,  educed  the 
same  results.  I  was  much  struck,  when  spending  half  an 
hour  in  a  museum  illustrative  of  the  arts  in  China,  by  the 
identity  of  these  with  our  own,  especially  in  the  purely 
mechanical  departments ;  and  again,  when  similarly  em- 
ployed in  that  apartment  devoted,  in  the  British  Museum, 
to  the  domestic  utensils  of  the  ancient  Egyptians.  The 
identity  of  the  more  common  contrivances  which  I  wit- 
nessed, with  flxmiliar  contrivances  in  our  own  country,  I 
regarded  as  altogether  as  conclusive  of  an  identity  of  mind 
in  the  individuals  who  had  originated  them,  as  if  I  had 
actually  seen  human  creatures  at  work  on  them  all.  One 
class  of  productions  showed  me  that  the  potter's  wheel  and 
the  turning  lathe  had  been  known  and  employed  as  cer- 
tainly in  China  and  ancient  Egypt  as  in  Britain.  Another, 
that  their  weaving  processes  must  have  been  nearly  the 
same.  The  Chinese  know,  for  instance,  as  well  as  ourselves, 
that  patterns  can  be  delicately  brought  out,  —  t>s  in  the 
damasks, — without  the  assistance  of  color,  simply  by  expos- 
ing silken  or  flaxen  fibre  at  different  angles  to  tne  light ; 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  241 

and  ihcy  have  lallcn,  as  tlicir  •work  slio'ws,  on  the  right 
methods  of  producing  it.  And  tlie  Egj-ptians  anticipated 
us  in  even  our  most  liomely  household  contrivances.  They 
even  fermented  their  bread  and  trussed  tlieir  fowls  after  the 
same  fashion ;  and  thus  gave  evidence,  in  these  familiar 
matters,  that  they  thought  and  contrived  "after  the  manner 
of  men."  Now,  in  acquainting  myself  with  the  organisms 
of  the  geologic  periods,  I  have  been  similarly  but  more 
deeply  impressed  by  what  I  must  be  permitted  to*  term  the 
human  cast  and  character  of  the  contrivances  Avhicli  they 
exemplified.  Not  only  could  I  understand  the  principles  on 
Avhich  they  were  constructed,  but  further,  not  a  few  of  thera 
had,  I  found,  been  actually  introduced  into  works  of  luunan 
invention  ages  ere  they  were  discovered  in  the  rock.  What 
the  great  Creator-worker  had  originated  in  the  Palaeozoic 
and  Secondary  periods,  had  been  in  after  times  originated 
by  the  little  creature-worker,  wholly  unaware  that  his  con- 
trivance had  been  anticipated,  and  was  but  a  repetition  of 
a  previously  executed  design.  In  the  later  geologic  ages 
the  organization  of  the  various  extinct  animals  so  nearly 
resembled  that  of  the  animals  which  still  live,  that  we  may 
regard  it  as  not  inadequately  represented  by  the  illusti*ations 
of  Paley.  A  few  such  exceptional  contrivances  appear 
among  the  mammals  of  the  Tertiary  as  that  formed  by  the 
huge  pickaxe-like  tusks  of  the  Dinotherium,  or  a  few  such 
extraordinary  modifications  of  the  ordinary  mammalian 
framework  as  that  exhibited  in  the  enormously  massive  pel- 
vic arches  and  hinder  limbs  of  the  Mylodon  and  Megathe- 
rium. But  not  initil  we  pass  into  the  deposits  of  the  Sec- 
ondary period,  and  get  among  its  cephalopoda,  do  we  find 
a  mechanism  altogether  unlike  any  with  Avhich  we  are 
acquainted  among  living  organisms.  As  admirably  shown 
by  Buckland,  the  partitions  which  separate  into  chambers 
all  the  whoi-ls  of  the  ammonite  except  the  outermost  one, 
21 


242 


GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 


were  exquisitely  adapted  to  strengthen,  by  the  tortuous 
Avindings  of  their  outer  edges,  a  shell  which  had  to  combine 
great  lightness  with  great  poAvers  of  resistance.  Itself  a 
continuous  arch  throughout,  it  Avas  supported  by  a  series  of 
continuous  arches  inside,  somewhat  resembling  in  form  the 
groined  ribs  of  the  Gothic  roof,  but  which,  unlike  the  pon- 
derous stone  work  of  the  mediaeval  architects,  were  as  light 
as  they  were  strong.  And  to  this  combination  of  arches 
there  was  added,  in  the  ribs  and  grooves  of  the  shell,  yet 
another  element  of  strength,  —  that  which  has  of  late  been 
introduced  into  iron  roofs,  which,  by  means  of  their  corru- 
gations, —  ribs  and  grooves  like  those  of  the  ammonite,  — 
are  made  to  span  over  wide  spaces,  without  the  su^^port  of 
beams  or  rafters.  Still  more  recently,  the  same  principle 
has  been  introduced  into  metallic  boats,  which,  when  corru- 

Fig   94. 


AMMONITES   HUMPEIESIANUS. 

{Oolite.) 


gated,  like  the  old  ammonites,  are  found  to  be  sufficiently 
strong  to  resist  almost  any  degree  of  pressure  Avithout  the 
wonted  addition  of  an  interior  fi-amework.  Similar  evi- 
dences of  design  appear  in  the  other  extinct  molluscs  pecu- 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES. 


243 


Jiar  to  these  geologic  ages,  such  as  the  hamite  and  turrilite. 
Tlie  belemnite  seems  to  liave  united  the  princi])le  of  the 
float  to  tliat  of  tlie  sinker,  as  we  see  both  united  in  some  of 
our  modern  life  boats,  which  are  steadied  on  their  keel  by 
one  pnncii)le,  and  preserved  from  foundering  by  the  other; 
or  as  we  find  them  united  by  the  boy  in  his  mimic  smack, 
Avhich  he  hollows  out  and  decks,  in  order  to  render  it  suffi- 
ciently light,  while  at  the  same  time  he  furnishes  it  with  a 
keel  of  lead,  in  order  to  render  it  sufficiently  steady.  The 
old  articulata  abound  in  marks  of  ingenious  mechanical 
contrivance.     The  trilobites  were  covered  over  back  and 


Fig.  95. 


Fig.  96. 


ENCRINITES   MONILIFORMIS. 

(Trias.) 


CUPRESSOCRINUS    CRASSU8. 

( Old  Red  Sandstone.) 


head  with  the  most  exquisitely  constructed  plate  armor: 
but  as  their  abdomens  seem  to  have  been  soft  and  defence- 
less, they  had  the  ability  of  coiling  themselves  round  on  the 
approach  of  danger,  plate  moving  on  plate  with  the  nicijst 


244  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

adjustment,  till  the  rim  of  the  ai-med  tail  rested  on  that  of 
the  armed  head,  and  the  creature  presented  the  appearance 
of  a  ball  defended  at  every  point.  In  some  genera,  as  in 
Calymene,  the  tail  consisted  of  jointed  segments  tiU  its  ter- 
mination ;  in  others,  as  in  Illainus,  there  was  a  great  caudal 
shield,  that  in  size  and  fonn  corresponded  to  tlie  shield 
which  covered  the  head ;  the  segments  of  Calj-raene,  from 
the  flexibility  of  their  joints,  fitted  close  to  the  cerebral 
rim ;  while  the  same  eftect  was  produced  in  the  inflexible 
shields,  caudal  and  cephalic,  of  Illaenus,  by  their  exact  cor- 
respondence, and  the  flexibility  of  the  connecting  rings, 
which  enabled  them  to  fit  together  like  two  equal-sized 
cymbals  brought  into  contact  at  every  point  by  the  hand, 
l^or  were  the  ancient  crinoids  less  remarkable  for  the  amount 
of  nice  contrivance  which  their  structures  exhibited,  than 
the  ancient  molluscs  or  crustaceans.  In  their  calyx-like 
bodies,  consisting  always  of  many  parts,  we  find  the  princi- 
ple of  the  arch  introdued  in  almost  eveiy  possible  form  and 
modification,  and  the  utmost  flexibility  secured  to  their 
stony  arms  by  the  amazing  number  of  the  pieces  of  whicii 
they  were  composed,  and  the  nice  disposition  of  the  joints. 
In  the  Pentacrinites  of  the  Secondary  period  (see  Fig.  97) 
an  immense  spread  of  anus,  about  a  thousand  in  nuiiiber, 
and  composed  of  about  a  hundred  thousand  sepai-ate  pieces, 
had  all  the  flexibility,  though  formed  of  solid  lime,  of  a 
drift  of  nets,  and  yet  were  so  nicely  jointed,  tooth  fitting 
into  tooth  in  all  their  numerous  parts,  and  the  whole  so 
bound  together  by  ligament,  that,  with  all  the  flexibihty, 
they  had  also  all  the  toughness  and  tenacity,  of  pieces  of 
thread  network.  Human  ingenuity,  with  the  same  purposes 
to  efiect,  that  is,  the  sweeping  of  shoals  of  swimming 
animals  into  a  central  receptacle,  would  probably  construct 
a  somewhat  similar  machine;  but  it  would  take  half  a  life- 
time to  execute  one  equally  elaborate. 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES. 


245 


In  carefully  examining,  for  purposes  of  restoration,  some 
of  the  earliest  ganoidal  fishes,  I  was  not  a  little  impressed 


Fig.  97.* 


PENTACRINUS    FASCICULOSUS. 

(Lias.) 

*  a,  Articulating  surfiice  of  joint,    h.  Fragment  of  column,  exhibiting 
laterally  the  tooth  processes,  so  fitted  into  each  other  as  to  admit  of 
21* 


246 


GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 


by  the  peculiar  mechanical  contrivances  exhibited  in  their 
laro-ely  developed  dermal  skeletons.  In  some  cases  these 
contrivances  Avere  sufficiently  simple,  resembling  those  which 
we  find  exemplified  in  the  humbler  trades,  originated  in 
comparatively  unenlightened  ages  ;  and  yet  their  simplicity 
had  but  the  effect  of  rendering  the  peculiarly  hximan  cast 
of  the  mind  exhibited  in  their  production  all  the  more 
obvious.  The  bony  scales  which  covered  fishes  such  as  the 
Osteolepis  and  Diplopterus  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  or 

Fig.  98. 


a,  CHAMFERED  SCALES.    (Osteolepis.) 

b,  IMBKICATED    SCALES.      (Gll/ptolepiS.) 

{Old  Red  Sandstone.) 

the  Megalichthys  of  the  Coal  Measures,  Avere  of  consider- 
able mass  and  thickness.     They  could  not,  compatibly  with 

flexure  without  risk   of  dislocation.    The   uppermost  joint  shows  two 
lateral  cavities  for  the  articulation  of  auxiliar}-  arms. 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  247 

much  nicety  of  finish,  he  laid  over  each  other,  Hke  the  thin 
horny  scales  of  the  salmon  or  herring ;  and  so  we  find  them 
curiously  fitted  together,  not  like  slates  on  a  modern  roof, 
but  like  hewn  stones  on  an  ancient  one.  There  ran  on  the 
upper  surface  of  each,  along  the  anterior  side  and  higher 
end,  a  groove  of  a  depth  equal  to  half  the  thickness  of  the 
scale ;  and  along  the  posterior  side  and  lower  end,  on  the 
imder  surface,  a  sort  of  bevelled  chamfer,  which,  fitting  into 
the  grooves  of  the  scales  immediately  behind  and  beneath 

Fig.  99. 


SCALE    OF   HOLOPTYCHIUS    GlGANTEtJS. 

(Nat.  size.) 
{Old  Med  Sandstone.) 


it,  brought  their  surfaces  to  the  same  line,  and  rendered  the 
shining  coverings  of  these  strongly  armed  ganoids  as  smooth 
and  even  as  those  of  the  most  delicately  coated  fishes  of 
the  present  day.  In  the  scales  of  the  Celacanth  family  the 
arran^rement  was  difierent.     Though  exceedingh'  massive 

O  CI?  -c     w 

in  some  of  the  genera,  they  were  imbricated,  like  those  of 


248  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

the  Pangolins ;  and  were  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  combi- 
nation of  contrivances  which  they  exhibited  for  securing  the 
greatest  possible  amount  of  strength  fi-om  the  least  possible 
amount  of  thickness.  The  scales  of  Iloloptychius  glganteus 
may  be  selected  as  representative  of  those  of  the  family  to 
Avhich  it  belonged.  It  consisted  of  three  plates,  or  rather, 
like  the  human  skull,  of  two  solid  plates,  with  a  dijyloe  or 
spongy  layer  between.  The  outer  surface  was  curiously  fret- 
ted into  alternate  ridges  and  furrows ;  and  hence  the  name 
of  the  genus,  —^orinkled  scale  ;  and  these  imparted  to  the 
exterior  plate  on  which  they  occurred,  and  Avhich  was 
formed  of  solid  bone,  the  strength  which  results  from  a  cor- 
rugated or  fluted  surface.  Cromwell,  in  commissioning  a 
friend  to  send  him  a  helmet,  shrewdly  stipulated  that  it 
should  be  a  "fluted  pot ;"  and  we  find  that  the  Holoptychius 
had  got  the  principle  of  the  fluted  pot  exemplified  in  the 
outer  plate  of  each  of  its  scales,  untold  ages  before.  The 
spongy  middle  plate  must,  like  the  diploe  of  the  skull,  have 
served  to  deaden  ths  vibrations  of  a  blow  dealt  from  the 

Fig.  100.  ^ 


SECTION   OF   SCALE   OF   HOLOPTTCHirS. 

(Mag.  eight  diameters.) 

outside.  It  was  a  stratum  of  sand  bags  piled  up  in  the  mid- 
dle of  a  plank  rampart.  Their  innermost  table  was  formed, 
like  the  outer,  of  solid  bone,  but  had  a  diflerent  arrange- 
ment.    It  Avas  properly  not  one,  but  several  tables,  in  each 


ON   THE   TWO   THEOLOGIES.  249 

of  which  the  osseous  fibres,  spread  out  in  the  general  plane 
of  the  scale,  lay  at  a  diverse  angle  from  those  of  the  table 
immediately  in  contact  with  it.  The  principle  was  evidently 
that  of  the  double-woven  cloth,  or  cloth  of  two  incorporated 
layers,  such  as  moleskin^  in  which,  from  the  arrangement 
of  the  threads,  Avhat  a  draper  would  term  the  tear  of  the 
one  layer  or  fold  lies  at  a  diiferent  angle  in  the  general 
fabric  from  that  of  the  other.  We  are  thus  presented,  in  a 
single  fossil  scale  little  more  than  the  eighth  part  of  an  inch 
in  thickness,  with  three  distinct  strengthening  principles, — 
the  jjrinciple  of  Cromwell's  "fluted  pot," — the  principle  of 
a  rampart  lined  Avith  plank,  and  filled  Avith  sand  bags  in  the 
centre,  —  and  the  principle  of  the  doublc-woA'en  fabrics  of 
the  "moleskin"  manuficturer.*  The  contrivances  exem- 
plified in  the  cuirass  of  the  Pterichthys  were  scarce  less 
remarkable.  It  was  formed  of  bony  plates,  strongly  arched 
above,  but  comparatively  flat  beneath  ;  and  along  both  its 
anterior  and  posterior  rims  a  sudden  thickening  of  the  jilates 
formed  a  massive  band,  which  served  to  strengthen  the 
entire  structure,  as  transverse  ribs  of  stone  ara  found  streng- 
thening: Gothic  va\ilts  of  the  Norman  age.  The  scale 
covered  tail  of  the  creature  issued  from  within  the  posterior 
rim,  which  formed  around  it  a  complete  though  irregular 
ring,  arched  above  and  depressed  beneath ;  whereas  the 
anterior  rim,  to  which  the  head  was  attached,  was  incom- 
plete when  separated  fi'om  it.  It  was,  in  its  detached  state, 
an  arch  wanting  the  keystone.  A  keystone,  however,  pro- 
jected outwards  from  the  occipital  plate  of  the  head ;  and, 


*  Perhaps  one  strengthening  principle  more  might  be  enumerated  as 
occurring  in  this  curious  piece  of  mechanism.  In  tlie  layers  of  Hic  netlier 
plate,  the  fibres,  instead  of  being  laid  in  parallel  lines,  like  the  threads  in 
the  moleskin  of  my  illustration,  seem  to  be  felted  together, — an  arrange- 
ment which  must  have  added  considerably  to  their  coherency  and  powers 
of  resistance. 


250  GEOLOGY   IN    ITS   BEARINGS 

as  it  had  to  form  at  once  the  bond  of  connection  between 
the  cerebral  armature  of  the  creature  and  its  cuirass,  and  to 
complete  the  arch  formed  by  the  strengthening  belt  or  rib 
of  the  hitter,  it  curiously  combined  the  principle  of  both 
the  dovetail  of  the  carpenter  and  the  keystone  of  the  mason. 
Viewed  from  above,  it  was  a  dovetail,  forming  a  strong 
attachment  of  the  head  to  the  body ;  viewed  in  the  trans- 
verse section,  it  was  an  efficient  keystone,  that  gave  solidity 
and  strength  to  the  arched  belt  or  rib.  Both  keystone 
and  dovetail  are  comparatively  simple  contrivances ;  but  I 
know  not  that  they  have  been  united  in  the  same  piece,  save 
in  the  very  ancient  instance  furnished  by  the  strong  bony 
plate  which  connected  the  helmet  of  the  Pterichthys  with 
its  cuirass. 

A  brief  anecdote,  yet  further  illustrative  of  the  frame- 
work of  this  ancient  ganoid,  may  throw  some  additional 
light  on  what  I  have  ventured  to  terra  the  human  cast 
of  the  contrivances  exhibited  in  the  organisms  of  the  old 
geologic  ages.  After  carefully  examining  many  specimens, 
I  published  a  restoration  of  both  the  upper  and  under  side 
of  Pterichtlsys  fully  fifteen  years  ago.  The  greatest  of 
living  ichthyologists,  however,  misled  by  a  series  of  speci- 
mens much  less  complete  than  mine,  differed  from  me  in 
my  conclusions;  and  what  I  had  represented  as  the 
creature's  under  or  abdominal  side,  he  represented  as  its 
upper  or  dorsal  side;  while  its  actual  upper  side  he* 
regarded  as  belonging  to  another,  though  closely  allied, 
genus.  I  had  no  opportunity,  as  he  resided  on  the  Con- 
tinent at  the  time,  of  submitting  to  him  the  specimens  on 
which  I  had  founded;  though,  at  once  certain  of  his 
thorough  candor  and  love  of  truth,  and  of  the  solidity  of 
my  data,  I  felt  confident  that,  in  order  to  alter  his  decision, 
it  was  but  necessary  that  I  should  submit  to  him  my 
evidence.     Meanwhile,  however,  the  case  was  regarded  as 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  251 

settled  against  me ;  and  I  found  at  least  one  popular  and 
very  ingenious  writer  on  geology,  after  referring  to  my 
description  of  the  Pterichthys,  going  on  to  say  that, 
though  graphic,  it  was  not  correct,  and  that  he  himself 
could  describe  it  at  least  more  truthfully,  if  not  more 
vividly,  than  I  had  done.  And  then  there  followed  a 
description  identical  with  that  by  which  mine  had  been 
supplanted.  Five  years  Lad  passed,  when  one  day  our 
greatest  British  authority  on  fossil  fishes.  Sir  Philip  Eger- 

* 

ton,  was  struck,  when  passing  an  hour  among  the  ichthyic 
organisms  of  his  princely  collection,  by  the  appearance 
presented  by  a  central  plate  in  the  cuirass  of  the  Pterich- 
thys, It  is  of  a  lozenge  form,  and,  occupying  exactly  such 
a  place  in  the  nether  ai'mature  of  the  creature  as  that 
occupied  by  the  lozenge  shaped  spot  on  the  ace  of  dia- 
monds, it  comes  in  contact  with  four  other  plates  that  lie 
around  it,  and  represent,  so  to  speak,  the  white  portions 
of  the  card.  And  Sir  Philip  now  found,  that  instead  of 
lying  over,  it  lay  under,  the  four  contiguous  plates  :  they 
overlapped  it,  instead  of  being  overlapped  by  it.  This,  he 
at  once  said,  on  ascertaining  the  fact,  cannot  be  the  upper 
side  of  the  Pterichthys.  A  plate  so  arranged  would  ha^•e 
formed  no  proper  protection  to  the  exposed  dorsal  surface 
of  the  creature's  body,  as  a  slight  blow  Avould  have  at 
once  sent  it  in  upon  the  interior  framework ;  but  a  proper 
enough  one  to  the  under  side  of  a  heavy  swimmer,  that, 
like  the  flat  fishes,  kept  close  to  the  bottom ;  —  a  character 
which,  as  shoAvn  by  the  massive  bulk  of  its  body,  and  its 
small  spread  of  fin,  must  have  belonged  to  the  Pterichthys. 
Sir  Philip  followed  up  his  observations  on  the  central 
l^late  by  a  minute  examination  of  the  other  j^arts  of  the 
creature's  armature  ;  and  the  survey  terminated  in  a  recog- 
nition of  the  earlier  restoration,  —  set  aside  so  lono-  before, 
' —  as    virtually  the   true    one  ;  —  a   recognition   in   which 


252  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS   BEARINGS 

Agassiz,  when  made  acquainted  with  the  nature  of  the 
evidence,  at  once  acquiesced.  Now,  here  was  there  a 
question  which  had  been  raised  regarding  the  true  mech- 
anism of  one  of  the  oldest  ganoidal  fishes,  and  settled 
erroneously  on  wrong  data,  again  opened  up,  to  be  settled 
anew  on  one  of  the  most  obvious  mechanical  principles 
exempUfied  in  the  simple  art  of  the  slater  or  tiler.  The 
argument  of  Sir  Philip  amounted  simply  to  this  :  —  If  the 
accepted  restoration  be  a  true  one,  then  the  Creator  of 
the  Pterichthys  must  have  committed  a  mistake  in  me- 
chanics which  an  ordinary  slater  would  have  avoided; 
but  as  the  Creator  commits  no  such  blunders,  the  mistake 
probably  occurs  in  but  the  restoration.  I  may  mention, 
that  the  dorsal  surface  of  this  ancient  fish  had  also  its 
central  plate,  —  a  lozenge  truncated  at  its  two  longer  ends; 
and  that,  moulded  to  meet  the  necessities  of  its  position,  it 
was  not  flat,  like  the  imder  one,  but  strongly  arched  ;  and 
that  on  four  of  its  six  sides  it  overrode  by  a  squamose 
suture  the  lower  plates  with  which  it  came  in  contact. 

These  are  but  humble  illustrations  of  the  designing 
principle,  as  exhibited  of  old ;  and  yet  they  impress  none 
the  less  strongly  on  that  account.  Among  the  many  con- 
trivances of  the  Chinese  Museum,  to  which  I  have  already 
referred,  none  seemed  more  to  excite  the  curiosity  of 
visitors  than  a  set  of  tall-backed,  elaborately  carved  chairs, 
exceedingly  like  those  which  were  used  in  our  ovm  country 
two  centuries  ago,  and  which  Cowper  so  exquisitely 
describes.  For  thousands  of  miles  in  the  wide  tract  that 
spreads  out  between  European  Christendom  and  the  great 
wall,  the  inhabitants  squat  upon  mats  or  carpets,  or  loll  on 
divans;  and  the  contrivance  of  the  chair  is  unknoA\'n:  it 
reappears  in  China,  however,  and  reappears,  not  as  a  mere 
seat  or  stool,  but  as,  in  every  bar  and  limb,  the  identical 
chair  of  Europe   arrested  a  century  or  two  back  in  its 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  253 

development.  And  every  corresponding  tenon  and  mortise 
exhibited  by  the  Chinese  and  European  examples  of  this 
simple  piece  of  furniture  served  more  forcibly  to  show  an 
identity  of  character  in  the  minds  which  had  originated 
them  in  countries  so  far  apart,  than  the  more  elaborate 
contrivances  which,  thougli  illustrative  of  the  same  prin- 
cii^les  of  invention,  were  less  easily  understood.  It  is  so 
with  the  more  simple  and  lamiliar  instances  of  adaptation 
furnished  by  the  works  of  the  Creator.  We  infer  from 
them,  more  directly  than  from  the  complex  mechanisms, 
that  he  who  Avrought  of  old  after  the  manner  of  a  man 
must  have,  in  his  intellectual  chai-acter,  if  I  may  so  express 
myself,  certain  man-like  qualities  and  traits.  In  all  those 
works  on  Natural  Theology  that  treat,  like  the  work  of 
Paley,  on  the  argument  of  design,  the  assumption  of  a 
certain  unity  of  the  intellectual  nature  of  the  Creator  and 
creature  is  made,  tacitly  at  least,  the  basis  of  all  the  reason- 
ings; and  it  is  in  the  cases  in  which  tlie  design  is  most 
simple  that  the  argument  is  most  generally  understood.  It 
is  in  the  lower  skirts  of  the  Divine  nature  that  we  most 
readily  trace  the  resemblance  to  the  nature  of  man,  —  an 
effect,  mayhap,  of  the  narrow  reach  of  our  faculties  in  their 
present  infantile  state. 

But  the  resemblance  is  not  restricted  to  the  constructive 
department.  Both  in  the  Chinese  collection  and  among 
the  Egyptian  antiquities  exhibited  in  the  British  Museum, 
I  found  color  as  certainly  as  mechanical  contrivance.  And 
the  color  furnished  not  only  a  practical  example  from  both 
the  early  and  the  remote  peoples  of  the  same  sort  of 
chemical  science  as  exists  at  the  present  time  among 
ourselves  in  our  dyeworks  and  pigment  manufactories,  but 
it  also  showed  a  certain  identity  with  our  own  of  their 
sense  of  beauty.  The  Chinese  satins  are  gorgeous  with 
green,  blue,  yellow,  scarlet,  crimson,  and  purple,  and  have 
22 


254  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

fringes  heavy  Avith  thread  of  gold.  Gilding  is  as  common 
among  this  distant  people  as  among  oui'selves,  and  at  once 
shows  a  familiarity  with  the  art  of  the  gold  beater,  and  a 
sensibility  to  the  beauty  of  a  golden  surface ;  and  in  the 
painted  ornaments  I  detected  the  rich  tints  of  vermilion 
and  crimson  lake,  with  the  mineral  blues,  yellows,  and 
greens.  In  the  Egyptian  department,  though  the  blanch- 
ing influences  of  three  thousand  years  had  dimmed  the 
tints  and  tarnished  the  metals,  I  found  evidence  of  the 
same  regard  to  hue  and  lustre  as  exists  still  in  China  and 
among  ourselves ;  all  that  now  pleases  the  eye  in  London 
and  Pekin  had  pleased  it  in  Thebes  during  the  times  of  the 
earlier  Pharaohs.  And  just  as  we  infer  from  the  mechanical 
contrivances  of  tha  Creative- Worker  that  he  possesses  a 
certain  identity  of  mind  in  the  constnictive  department 
with  his  creature-workers,  and  this  upon  the  principle  on 
which  we  infer  an  identity  of  mind  between  the  creature- 
workers  of  China,  ancient  Egypt,  and  our  own  country, 
seeing  that  their  works  are  identical,  must  we  not  also 
infer,  on  the  same  principle,  that  he  possesses  in  the  OBsthetic 
department  a  certain  identity  with  them  also.  True,  this 
region  of  the  beautiful,  ever  surrounded  by  an  atmosphere 
of  obscure,  ill-settled  metaphysics,  is  greatly  less  clear 
than  that  mechanical  provmce  of  whose  various  machines, 
whether  of  Divine  or  human  contrivance,  it  can  be  at  least 
affirmed  that  machines  they  are,  and  that  they  effect  their 
purposes  by  contrivances  of  the  same  or  of  resembling 
kinds.  And  yet  the  appearance  in  nature,  age  after  age, 
of  the  same  forms  and  colors  of  beauty  which  man,  in 
gratifying  his  taste  for  the  lovely  in  shape  and  hue,  is  ever 
repi'oducing  for  himself,  does  seem  to  justify  our  inference 
of  an  identity  of  mind  in  this  province  also.  The  colors 
of  the  old  geologic  organisms,  like  those  of  the  paintings 
of  ancient  Egypt,  are  greatly  faded.     A  few,  however,  of 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES 


255 


the  Secondary,  and  even  Paleozoic  sliells,  still  retain  the 
rich  prismatic  hues  of  the  original  nacre.  Many  of  tlie 
Tertiary  division  still  bear  the  distinctive  painted  spots. 
Some  of  the  later  fossil  fishes,  when  first  laid  open  in  the 
rock,  exhibit  the  pearly  gleam  that  must  of  old  have 
lighted  up  the  green  depths  of  the  water  as  they  darted 
through.  Not  a  few  of  the  fossil  corals  preserve  enough 
of  their  former  color  to  impart  much  delicacy  of  tint  to  the 
marbles  in  which  they  occur.  But  it  is  chiefly  in  form,  not 
in  shade  or  hue,  that  we  find  in  the  organisms  of  the 
geologic  ages  examples  of  that  beauty  in  which  man 
delights,  and  which  he  is  ever  reproducing  for  himself. 
There  is  scarce  an  architectural  ornament  of  the  Gothic  or 
Grecian  styles  which  may  not  be  found  existing  as  fossils 
in  the  rocks.  The  Ulodendron  was  sculptured  into  grace- 
fully arranged  rows  of   pointed   and    closely  imbricated 

Fig.  101. 


SIGILLARIA   GR(ESERI 

( Coal  Measures.) 


leaves,  similar  to  those  into  which  the  Roman  architects 
fretted  the  torus  of  the  Corinthian  order.     The  Sigillaria 


256 


GEOLOGY   IN   ITS   BEARINGS 


were  fluted  columns  ornately  carv^ed  in  the  line  of  the 
channelled  flutes;  the  Lepidodendra  bore,  according  to 
their  species,  sculptured  scales,  or  lozenges,  or  egg-like 
hollows,  set  in  a  sort  of  frame,  and  relieved  into  knobs  and 
furroAvs;  all  of  them  furnishing  examples  of  a  delicate 
diaper  work,  like  that  so  admired  in  our  more  ornate 
Gothic  buildings,  such  as  Westminster  Abbey,  or  Canter- 

Fig.  102. 


Ul 


Fig.  103. 


Fig.  104. 


WHORLED    SHELLS   OF   THE    OLD   RED    SANDSTONE.* 

bury  and   Chichester   Cathedrals,   only  greatly   more   ex- 
quisite in  their  design  and  finish      The  scroll  shells, "a  very 


*  Fig.  102,  Clymenia  Sedwicki;  Fig.  103,  Gyroceras  Eifelensis;  Fig.  104, 
Cirrus  Goldfussii. 


ON    THE    TWO    THKOLOGIliS.  257 

numerous  section  of  tlie  cla^is  in  the  earlier  ages,  such  as 
Maclurea,  Euoiii})hahis,  Clymenia,  and  the  gi*eat  family  of 
the  ammonites,  were  volutes  of  varying  proportions,  but 
not  less  graceful  than  the  ornament  of  similar  proportions 
so  frequently  introduced  into  Greek  and  Roman  architec- 
ture, and  of  which  we  have  such  prominent  examples  in 
the  capitals  of  the  Ionic,  Corinthian,  and  composite  orders. 
In  what  is  knowTi  as  the  modem  Ionic  the  spii-al  of  the 
volute  is  not  all  on  one  plane ;  it  is  a  Euomphalus :  in  the 
central  volutes  of  the  Corinthian  the  spiral  is  an  open  one ; 
it  is  a  Lituite  or  Gyroceras :  in  the  ancient  Ionic  it  is  either 
wholly  flat,  as  in  Planorbus  or  the  upper  side  of  Maclurea, 
or  slightly  relieved,  as  in  the  ammonites.  There  is  no  form 
of  the  volute  known  to  the  architect  which  may  not  be 
found  in  the  rocks,  but  there  are  many  forms  in  the  rocks 
unknown  to  the  architect.  Nor  are  the  spire-like  shells 
(see  Fig.  105)  less  remarkable  for  the  i-ich  and  varied  style 
of  their  ornamentation  than  the  whorled  ones.  They  are 
spires,  pinnacles,  turrets,  broaches;  oniate,  in  some  in- 
stances, beyond  the  reach  of  the  architect,  and  illusti-ative, 
in  almost  all,  of  his  happiest  forms  and  proportions.  We 
detect  among  the  fossils  the  germs  of  numerous  designs 
developed  in  almost  every  department  of  art ;  but  merely 
to  enumerate  them  would  require  a  volume.  One  form  of 
the  old  classic  lamp  was  that  of  the  nautilus ;  another,  that 
of  Gyplwea  incurva  /  the  zigzag  mouldings  of  the  Noi'man 
Gothic  niay  be  found  in  the  carinated  oysters  of  the  Green- 
sand  ;  the  more  delicate  frettings  of  similar  form  Avliich 
roughened  the  pillars  of  a  somewhat  later  age  occur  on 
Conulai'ia  and  the  dorsal  spines  of  Gyracanthus.  The  old 
corals,  too,  abound  in  ornamental  patterns,  which  man, 
unaware  of  their  existence  at  the  time,  devised  long  after 
for  himself.  In  an  article  on  calico  printing,  which  forms 
part  of  a  recent  history  of  Lancashire,  there  are  a  few  of 
22* 


258 


GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 


the   patterns  introduced,  backed  by  the  recommendation 
that  they  Avere  the  most  successM  ever  tried.     Of  one  of 


Fig.  105. 


Fig.  10& 


MTJKCHISOXIA   BIGRANULOSA. 

{Old  Bed  Sandstone.) 


CONULARIA   ORNATA. 

(Old  Bed  Sandstone.) 


these,  knoAvn  as  "Lane's  Net,"  there  sold  a  greater  number 
of  pieces  than  of  any  other  pattern  ever  brought  into  the 
market.  It  led  to  many  imitations ;  and  one  of  the  most 
popular  of  these  ansAvers  line  for  line,  save  that  it  is  more 
stiff  and  rectilinear,  to  the  pattern  in  a  recently  discovered 
Old  Red  Sandstone  coral,  the  Smithia  Pengellyi.  The 
beautifully  arranged  lines  -which  so  smit  the  dames  of 
England,  that  each  had  to  provide  herself  with  a  gown 
of  the  fabric  which  they  adorned,  had  been  stamped  amid 
the  rocks  eons  of  ages  before.  And  it  must  not  be  forgot- 
ten, that  all  these  forms  and  shades  of  beauty  which  once 
filled  all  nature,  but  of  which  only  a  few  fragments,  or  a 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES. 


259 


few  faded  tints,  survive,  were  created,  not  to  gratify  man's 
love  of  the  aesthetic,  seeing  that  man  had  no  existence  until 


Fig.  107. 


Fig.  108. 


CALICO    PATTERN. 

(Manchester.) 


SMITHIA    PEXGELLTI. 

(Old  Red  Sandstone.) 


long  after  they  liad  disappeared,  but  in  meet  harmony  with 
the  tastes  and  facuhies  of  the  Divine  Worker,  who  had  in 
his  Avisdom  produced  them  all. 

You  will,  I  trust,  bear  Avith  me  should  I  seek,  in  depths 
where  the  light  shed  by  science  becomes  obscure,  to  guide 
my  steps  by  light  derived  from  another  and  wholly  diiferent 
source.  In  an  assembly  such  as  that  Avhich  I  have  noAV  the 
honor  of  addressing,  there  must  be  many  shades  of  religious 
opinion.  I  shall,  however,  assail  no  man's  faith,  but  simply 
lay  before  you  a  few  deductions  which,  founded  on  my 
own,  have  supplied  me  Avith  Avhat  I  deem  a  consistent 
theory  of  the  curious  class  of  phenomena  Avith  which  this 
evening  we  have  been  mainly  dealing.  First,  then,  I  must 
hold  that  we  receive  the  true  explanation  of  the  man-VkQ 
character  of  the  Creator's  Avorkings  ere  man  Avas,  in  the 
remarkable  text  in  AA'hich  we  are  told  that  "  God  made  man 
in  his  OAvn  imacce  and  likeness."  There  is  no  restriction 
here  to  moral  quality :  the  moral  image  man  liad,  and  in 
large  measure  lost ;  but  the  intellectual  image  he  still  re- 
tains. As  a  geometrician,  as  an  arithmetician,  as  a  chemist, 
as  an  astronomer,  —  in  short,  in  all  the  departments  of 


2G0  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

what  are  known  as  the  strict  sciences,  —  man  differs  from 
his  Maker,  not  in  kind,  but  in  degree, — not  as  matter 
differs  from  mind,  or  darkness  from  light,  but  simply  as  a 
mere  portion  of  space  or  time  differs  from  all  space  or  all 
time.  I  have  already  referred  to  mechanical  contrivances 
as  identically  the  same  in  the  Divine  and  human  produc- 
tions ;  nor  can  I  doubt  that,  not  only  in  the  pervading 
sense  of  the  beautiful  in  form  and  color  which  it  is  our 
privilege  as  men  in  some  degree  to  experience  and  possess, 
but  also  in  that  perception  of  harmony  Avhich  constitutes 
the  musical  sense,  and  in  that  poetic  feeling  of  Avhich 
Scripture  furnishes  us  with  at  once  the  earliest  and  the 
highest  examples,  and  Avhich  we  may  term  the  poetic  sense, 
we  bear  the  stamp  and  impress  of  the  Divine  image.  Now, 
if  this  be  so,  we  must  look  upon  the  schemes  of  Creation, 
^Revelation,  and  Providence,  not  as  schemes  of  mere  adapta- 
tion to  man's  nature,  but  as  schemes  also  specially  adapted 
to  the  nature  of  God  as  the  pattern  and  original  nature. 
Further,  it  speaks,  I  must  hold,  of  the  harmony  and  unity 
of  one  sublime  scheme,  that,  after  long  ages  of  immaturity, 
—  after  the  dynasties  of  the  fish,  the  reptile,  and  the 
mammal  should  in  succession  have  terminated,  —  man 
should  have  at  length  come  upon  the  scene  in  the  image 
of  God ;  and  that,  at  a  still  later  pei-iod,  God  himself  should 
have  come  upon  the  scene  in  the  form  of  man ;  and  that 
thus  all  God's  workings  in  creation  should  be  indissolubly 
linked  to  God  himself,  not  by  any  such  mere  likeness  or 
image  of  the  Divinity  as  that  which  the  fii*st  Adam  bore, 
but  by  Divinity  itself  in  the  Second  Adam  ;  so  that  on  the 
rainbow-encircled  apex  of  the  pyramid  of  created  being  the 
Son  of  God  and  the  Son  of  Man  should  sit  enthroned  for- 
ever in  one  adorable  person.  That  man  should  have  been 
made  in  the  image  of  God  seems  to  have  been  a  meet 
preparation  for  God's  after  assumption  of  the  form  of  man. 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES  261 

It  was  perhaps  thus  secured  that  stock  and  graft^  if  I  may 
venture  on  such  a  metaphor,  should  Iiave  the  necessary 
affinity,  and  be  capable  of  being  united  in  a  single  person. 
The  false  gods  of  the  Egyptians  assumed,  it  was  fabled,  the 
forms  of  brutes :  it  was  the  human  form  and  nature  that 
was  assumed  by  the  true  God ;  —  so  far  as  we  know,  the 
only  form  and  natui^  that  could  have  brought  him  into 
direct  union  with  at  once  the  matter  and  mind  of  the 
universe  Avhich  he  had  created  and  made,  —  with  "true 
body  and  reasonable  soul."  Yet  further,  I  learn  by  in- 
evitable inference  from  one  of  the  more  distinctive  articles 
of  my  creed,  that  as  certainly  as  the  dynasty  of  the  fish 
was  predetermined  in  the  scheme  of  Providence  to  be 
succeeded  by  the  higher  dynasty  of  the  reptile,  and  that 
of  the  reptile  by  the  still  higher  dynasty  of  the  mammal,  so 
it  was  equally  predetermined  that  the  dynasty  of  respons- 
ible, fallible  man  should  be  succeeded  by  the  dynasty  of 
glorified,  immortal  man ;  and  that,  in  consequence,  the 
present  mixed  state  of  things  is  not  a  mere  result,  as  some 
theologians  believe,  of  a  certain  human  act  which  was  per- 
petrated about  six  thousand  years  ago,  but  was,  virtually 
at  least,  the  eflect  of  a  God-determined  decree,  old  as 
eternity,  —  a  decree  in  which  that  act  Avas  written  as  a 
portion  of  the  general  programme.  In  looking  abroad  on 
that  great  history  of  life,  ot  which  the  latter  portions  are 
recorded  in  the  pages  of  revelation,  and  the  earlier  in  the 
rocks,  I  feel  my  grasp  of  a  doctrine  first  taught  me  by 
our  Calvinistic  Catechism  at  my  mother's  knee,  tightening 
instead  of  relaxing.  "  The  decrees  of  God  are  his  eternal 
purposes,"  I  was  told,  "according  to  the  counsel  of  his  will, 
whereby  for  his  own  glory  he  hath  foreordained  whatso- 
ever comes  to  pass."  And  Avhat  I  was  told  early  I  still 
believe.  The  programme  of  Creation  and  Providence,  in 
all  its  successive  periods,  is  of  God,  not  of  man.     With  the 


262  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

arrangements  of  the  old  geologic  periods  it  is  obvious 
man  could  have  had  nothing  to  do :  the  j^rimeval  ages  of 
wondrous  plants  and  monster  animals  ran  their  course 
without  coxmsel  taken  of  him ;  and  in  reading  their  record 
in  the  bov/els  of  the  earth,  and  in  learning  from  their 
strange  characters  that  such  ages  there  were,  and  Avhat 
they  produced,  we  are  the  better  enabled  to  appreciate  the 
impressive  directness  of  the  sublime  message  to  Job,  when 
the  "  Lord  answered  him  out  of  the  whirlwind,  and  said. 
Where  wast  thou  when  I  laid  the  foundations  of  the  earth  ? 
Declare  if  thou  hast  understanding."  And  I  can  as  little 
regard  the  present  scene  of  things  as  an  ultimate  conse- 
quence of  what  man  had  willed  or  wrought,  as  even  any  of 
the  pre-Adamic  ages.  It  is  simply  one  scene  in  a  fore- 
ordained  series,  —  a  scene  intermediate  in  place  between 
the  age  of  the  irresponsible  mammal  and  of  glorified  man  ; 

Vand  to  provide  for  the  upward  passage  to  the  ultimate 
/State,  we  know  that,  in  reference  to  the  purposes  of  the 
Eternal,  he  through  whom  the  work  of  restoration  has 
\  been  effected  Avas  in  reality  what  he  is  designated  in  the 
remarkable  text,  "  The  Lamb  slain  from  the  foundations 
of  the  world."  First  in  the  course  of  things,  man  in  the 
image  of  God,  and  next,  in  meet  sequence,  God  in  the  form 
of  man,  have  been  equally  from  all  eternity  predetermined 
actors  in  the  same  great  scheme. 

I  a])i)roach  a  profound  and  terrible  mystery.  We  can 
see  how  in  the  pre-Adamic  ages  higher  should  have  suc- 
ceeded lower  dvnasties.  To  be  Ioav  was  not  to  be  immoral ; 
to  be  low  was  not  to  be  guilt-stained  and  miserable.  The 
sea  anemone  on  its  half-tide  rock,  and  the  fern  on  its 
niossy  hill-side,  are  low  in  their  respective  kingdoms;  but 
'^  they  are,  notwithstanding,  Avorthy,  in  their  quiet,  unob- 
trusive beauty,  of  the  God  who  formed  them.  It  is  only 
when  the  human  period  begins  that  we  are  startled  and 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  263 

perplexed  by  the  problem  of  a  lowness  not  innocent,  —  an 
inferiority  tantamount  to  moral  deformity.  In  the  period 
of  responsibility,  to  be  low  means  to  be  evil;  and  how,  we 
ask,  could  a  lowness  and  inferiority  resolvable  into  moral 
evil  have  had  any  place  in  the  decrees  of  that  Judge  who 
ever  does  what  is  right,  and  in  whom  moral  evil  can  have 
no  place  ?  The  subject  is  one  which  it  seems  not  given  to 
man  thoroughly  to  comprehend.  Permit  me,  however,  to 
remark  in  reply,  that  in  a  sense  so  i)lain,  so  obvious,  so 
unequivocally  true,  that  it  would  lead  an  intelligent  jury, 
impannelled  in  the  case,  conscientiously  to  convict,  and  a 
wise  judge  righteously  to  condemn,  all  that  is  evil  in  the 
present  state  of  things  man  may  as  certainly  have  wrought 
out  for  himself,  as  the  criminals  whom  we  see  sentenced  at 
every  justiciary  court  work  out  for  themselves  the  course 
of  punishment  to  Avhich  they  are  justly  subjected. 

It  has  been  well  said  of  the  Author  of  all  by  the  poet, 
that,  "binding  nature  fast  in  fate,"  he  "left  free  the 
human  will."  And  it  is  this  freedom  or  independency  of 
will  operating  on  an  intellect  moulded  after  the  image  and 
likeness  of  the  Divinity  that  has  rendered  men  capable  of 
being  what  the  Scriptures  so  emphatically  term  "fellow- 
workers  with  God."  In  a  humble  and  restricted  sense,  as 
I  have  already  remarked,  —  hixmble  and  restricted,  but  in 
that  restricted  sense  obviously  true,  —  the  surface  of  the 
earth  far  and  wide  testifies  to  this  fact  of  fellowship  in 
working.  The  deputed  lord  of  creation,  availing  himself 
of  God's  natural  laws,  does  what  no  mere  animal  of  the  old 
geologic  ages  ever  did,  or  ever  could  have  done,  —  he 
adorns  and  beautifies  the  earth,  and  adds  tenfold  to  its 
original  fertility  and  productiveness.  In  this  special  sense, 
then,  he  is  a  fellow-worker  with  Him  who,  according  to 
the  Psalmist,  "causeth  the  grass  to  grow  for  the  cattle, 
and  herb  for  the  service  of  man,  and  wine  that  maketb 


264  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

glad  the  heart  of  man,  and  oil  that  maketh  his  face  to 
shine,  and  bread  wliich  strengtheneth  man's  heart."  But 
it  is  in  a  greatly  higher  sense,  and  in  reference  to  God's 
moral  laws,  that  he  is  fitted  to  be  his  fellow-worker  in  the 
Scriptural  sense.  And  his  }3roper  employment  in  this  de- 
partment is  the  elevation  and  development,  moral  and 
intellectual,  of  himself  and  his  fellows-men,  both  in  adapta- 
tion to  the  demands  of  the  present  time,  and  in  preparation 
for  a  future  state. 

All  experience,  however,  serves  to  show  that  in  this 
paramount  department  man  greatly  fails;  nay,  that  he  is 
infinitely  less  true  to  his  proper  end  and  destiny  than  the 
beasts  that  perish  to  their  several  instincts.  And  yet  it 
may  be  remarked,  that  such  of  the  lower  animals  as  are 
guided  by  pure  instinct  are  greatly  more  infallible  within 
their  proper  spheres  than  the  higher,  half-reasoning  animals. 
The  mathematical  bee  never  constructs  a  false  angle  ;  the 
sagacious  dog  is  not  unfrequently  out  in  his  calculations. 
The  higher  the  animal  in  the  scale,  the  greater  its  liability 
to  error.  But  it  is  not  the  less  true,  that  no  fish,  no 
reptile,  no  mammal,  of  the  geologic  or  the  recent  ages, 
ever  so  failed  in  working  out  the  purposes  it  was  created 
to  serve,  as  man  has  failed  in  working  out  his;  further,  m 
no  creature  save  in  man  does  there  exist  that  war  of  the 
mind  between  appetite  and  duty  of  which  the  Apostle  so 
consciously  complained.  And  we  must  seek  an  explanation 
of  these  twin  facts  in  that  original  freedom  of  the  will 
which,  while  it  rendered  man  capable  of  being  of  choice 
God's  fellow-worker,  also  conferred  on  him  an  ability  of 
choosing  not  to  work  with  God.  And  his  choice  of  not 
working  with  him,  or  of  working  against  him,  being  once 
freely  made,  we  may  see  how,  from  man's  very  constitution 
and  nature,  as  an  intelligence  united  to  matter  that  in- 
creases his  kind  from  generation  to  generation  in  virtue 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  265 

of  tho  original  law,  the  ability  of  again  Avorking  with  God 
might  be  forever  destroyed.  And  thus  man's  general 
condition  as  a  lapsed  creature  may  be  as  unequivocally  a 
consequence  of  man's  own  act,  as  the  condition  of  indi- 
viduals born  free,  but  doomed  to  slavery  in  punislunent  of 
their  offences,  is  a  consequence  of  their  own  acts.  A  brief 
surA-ey  of  the  many-colored  and  variously-placed  hiunan 
family,  as  at  present  distributed  on  the  earth,  may  enable 
us  in  some  degree  to  conceive  of  a  matter  which,  involving, 
as  it  does,  that  master  problem  of  moral  science,  the  origin 
of  evil,  seems,  as  I  have  said,  not  to  be  given  to  man  fully 
to  comprehend. 

"  The  different  races  of  mankind,"  says  Humboldt,  em- 
pleying,  let  me  remark,  the  language  of  the  distinguished 
German  naturalist  Miiller,  to  gi^e  expression  to  the  view 
which  he  himself  adopts,  —  "the  different  races  of  mankind 
are  not  different  species  of  a  genus,  but  forms  of  one  sole 
species."  "  Tlie  human  species,"  says  Cuvier,  "  ajDpears  to 
be  single."  "When  we  compare,"  says  Pritchard,  "all 
the  facts  and  observations  which  have  been  heretofore  fully 
established  as  to  the  specific  instincts  and  separate  psychical 
endowments  of  all  the  distinct  tribes  of  sentient  beings  in 
the  universe,  we  are  entitled  to  draw  confidently  the  con- 
clusion, that  all  human  races  are  of  one  species  and  one 
family."  "  God  hath  made  of  one  blood,"  said  the  Apostle 
Paul,  in  addressing  himself  to  the  elite  of  Athens,  "all 
nations,  for  to  dwell  on  the  face  of  all  the  earth,"  Such, 
on  this  special  head,  is  the  testimony  of  Revelation,  and 
such  the  conclusion  of  our  highest  scientific  authorities. 
The  question  has,  indeed,  been  raised  in  these  latter  times, 
whether  each  species  of  animals  may  not  have  been  origi- 
nally created,  not  by  single  pairs  or  in  single  centres,  but  by 
several  pairs  and  in  several  centres,  and,  of  course,  the 
human  species  among  the  rest  ?  And  the  qnery^  —  for  in 
23 


266  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS   BEARINGS 

reality  it  amounts  to  nothing  more,  —  has  been  faA'orably 
entertained  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  On  purely 
scientific  grounds  it  is  of  course  difficult  to  prove  a  negative 
in  the  case,  just  as  it  would  be  difficult  to  prove  a  negative 
were  the  question  to  be,  Avhether  the  planet  Venus  "was  not 
composed  of  quartz  rock,  or  the  planet  Mars  of  Old  Red 
Sandstone?  But  the  portion  of  the  problem  really  solvable 
by  science,  —  the  identity  of  the  human  race  under  all  its 
conditions,  and  in  all  its  varieties,  —  science  has  solved.  It 
has  determined  that  all  the  various  tribes  of  man  are  but 
forms  of  a  single  species.  And  in  the  definition  of  species, 
—  waiving  the  American  douht  until  it  shall  at  least 
become  something  more,  —  I  am  content  to  follow  the 
higher  authorities.  "We  unite,"  says  M.  de  CandoUe, 
"  under  the  designation  of  a  species^  all  those  individuals 
that  mutually  bear  to  each  other  so  close  a  resemblance  as 
to  allow  of  our  suj^posing  that  they  may  have  proceeded 
originally  from  a  single  being  or  a  single  pair."  "A 
5joeae5,"  says  Buffi^n,  "is  a  constant  succession  of  indi- 
viduals similar  to  and  capable  of  reproducing  each  other." 
"  A  species,''''  says  Cuvier,  "  is  a  succession  of  individuals 
which  reproduces  and  perpetuates  itself." 

Now,  all  history  and  all  tradition,  so  far  as  they  throw 
light  on  the  question  at  all,  agree  in  showing  that  the 
centre  in  Avhich  the  human  species  originated  must  have 
been  somewhere  in  the  temperate  regions  of  the  East,  not 
far  distant  from  the  Caucasian  group  of  mountains.  All 
the  old  seats  of  civilization,  —  that  of  Niiieveh,  Babylon, 
Palestine,  Egypt,  and  Greece,  —  are  spread  out  around  this 
centre.  And  it  is  certainly  a  circumstance  worthy  of 
notice,  and  surely  not  without  bearing  on  the  physical 
condition  of  primeval  humanity,  that  in  this  centre  we  find 
a  variety  of  the  species  which  naturalists  of  the  highest 
standing  regard  as  fundamentally  typical  of  the  highest 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  *^G7 

races  of  the  globe.  "The  natives  of  the  Caucasus,"  says 
Cixvier,  "r,re  even  noAV  considered  as  tlie  liandsomcst  on 
earth."  And  wlicrever  man  has,  if  I  may  so  speak,  fallen 
least,  —  Avherever  he  has  retained,  at  least  intellectually, 
the  Divine  image,  —  this  Caucasian  type  of  feature  and 
figure,  with,  of  course,  certain  national  modifications,  he 
also  retains.  It  was  developed  in  a  remarkable  degree 
among  the  old  Greeks,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  blasts  of 
some  of  their  handsomer  men  ;  and  still  more  remarkably 
in  their  heau  ideal  of  beauty,  as  exemplified  in  the  statues 
of  their  gods.  "We  see  it  also,  though  dashed  with  a 
shade  of  severity,  in  the  strong  forms  and  stern  features 
of  monarchs  that  reigned  of  old  in  Nineveh  and  Babylon, 
as  brought  to  light  in  their  impressive  efiigies  by  the  exca- 
vations of  Rawlinson  and  Layard.  And  further,  though 
somewhat  modified  by  the  African  dash,  we  detect  it  in 
the  colossal  statues  of  Egypt.  Nor,  as  shoAvn  by  Egyptian 
paintings  still  fresh  in  color  and  outline,  was  it  less  trace- 
able in  the  ancient  Jewish  countenance  and  figiu'e.  It  is 
still  palpable,  too,  amid  all  the  minor  peculiarities  of  national 
physiognomy,  in  the  various  peoples  of  Europe.  We  may 
see  it  in  our  oAvn  country,  though,  as  Sir  Walter  Scott 
tnxly  tells  us,  — 

"The  ragged  form  may  mark  the  mountain  band. 
And  harsher  features  and  a  mien  more  grave." 

It  walks,  however,  the  boards  of  our  Parliament  House  here 
in  a  very  respectable  type  of  Caucasian  man  ;  and  all  agree 
that  nowhere  else  in  modern  Europe  is  it  to  be  found  more 
true  to  its  original  contour  than  among  the  high-bred  aris. 
tocracy  of  England,  especially  among  the  female  members 
of  the  class.  Looking,  then,  at  the  entire  evidence,  —  at 
the  admitted  fact  that  the  Circassians  of  the  present  day 
are  an  eminently  handsome  people,  —  that  the  old  Greeks, 


2G8  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

Ninevites,  Egyjotians,  Jews,  Romans,  and  Math  these  all  the 
modern  nations  of  Europe,  are  but  the  varieties  of  the 
central  race  that  have  retained  in  greatest  perfection  the 
original  traits,  —  I  do  not  see  how  we  are  to  avoid  the  con- 
clusion that  this  Caucasian  type  was  the  type  of  Adamic 
man,  Adam,  the  father  of  mankind,  was  no  squalid  savage 
of  doubtful  humanity,  but  a  noble  specimen  of  man ;  and 
Eve  a  soft  Circassian  beauty,  but  exquisitely  lovely  beyond 
the  lot  of  fallen  humanity. 

"The  loveliest  pair 
That  ever  yet  in  love's  embraces  met: 
Adam,  the  goodliest  man  of  men  since  bom 
His  sons;  the  fairest  of  her  daughters  Eve." 

I  know  not  whether  I  should  add  what  follows.  It  has 
been  said  that  Luke,  the  "  beloved  physician,"  was  also  a 
painter.  It  has  been  said  that  that  traditionary,  time- 
honored  form,  which  we  at  once  recognize  in  the  pictures 
of  the  old  masters  as  that  of  the  Saviour  of  mankind, 
he  in  reality  bore  when  he  walked  this  earth  in  the  flesh. 
I  know  not  what  degree  of  probability  attaches  to  the 
belief.  I  know  not  whether  the  traditionary  form  be  in 
reality  the  true  one.  This,  however,  I  know,  that  if  such 
was  the  form  which  the  adorable  Redeemer  assumed  when 
he  took  to  himself  a  real  body  and  a  reasonable  soul,  the 
second  Adam,  like  the  first,  exemplified,  when  upon  earth, 
the  perfect  type  of  Caucasian  man. 

Let  me  next  remark,  that  the  further  we  remove  from 
the  original  centre  of  the  race,  the  more  degraded  and  sunk 
do  Ave  find  the  several  varieties  of  humanity.  We  must 
set  wholly  aside,  in  our  survey,  the  disturbing  element  of 
modern  emigration.  Caucasian  man  has  been  pressing  out- 
wards. In  the  backwoods  of  America,  in  Southern  Africa, 
in  Australia,  and  in  the  Polynesian  islands,  the  old  Adamio 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  2G9 

type  has  been  asserting  its  superiority,  and  annihilating 
before  it  the  degraded  races.  But  taking  into  accomit 
merely  the  aboriginal  varieties,  it  seems  to  be  a  general 
rule,  that  the  further  ^ve  remove  in  any  direction  from  the 
Adamic  centre,  the  more  animalized  and  sunk  do  we  find 
the  various  tribes  or  races.  Contrary  to  the  conceptions  of 
the  assertors  of  the  development  liypothesis,  we  ascertain, 
as  Ave  proceed  outwards,  that  the  course  is  not  one  of  pro- 
gression from  the  low  to  the  high,  but  of  descent  from  the 
high  to  the  low.  Passing  northwards,  we  meet,  Avhere  the 
lichen-covered  land  projects  into  the  frozen  ocean,  with  the 
diminutive  Laps,  squat,  iingraceful,  with  their  flat  features 
surmounted  by  pyi'amidal  skulls  of  small  capacity,  and,  as  a 
race,  unfitted  for  the  arts  either  of  peace  or  war.  We  meet 
also  with  the  timid  Namollas,  Avith  noses  so  flat  as  to  be 
scarce  A'isible  in  the  Avomen  and  children  of  the  race ;  and 
with  the  SAvarthy  Kamtschatkans,  Avith  their  broad  fixces, 
protuberant  bellies,  and  thin,  ill-formed  legs.  Passing  south- 
Avards,  Ave  come  to  the  negro  tribes,  Avith  their  sooty  skins, 
broad  noses,  thick  lips,  projecting  jawbones,  and  partially- 
Avebbed  fingers.  And  then  we  find  ourselves  among  the 
squalid  Hottentots,  repulsively  iigly,  and  begrimmed  Avith 
filth  ;  or  the  still  more  miserable  Bushmen.  Passing  east- 
Avards,  after  taking  leave  of  the  Persian  and  Indian  branches 
of  the  Caucasian  race,  we  meet  Avith  the  squat  Mongolian, 
with  his  high  cheek  bones  set  on  a  bx'oad  face,  and  his  com- 
pressed, unintellectual,  pig-like  eyes;  or  encounter,  in  the 
Indian  Archipelago  or  the  Australian  interior,  the  pitiably 
low  Alforian  races,  with  their  narroAV,  retreating  foreheads, 
slim,  feeble  limbs,  and  baboon-like  faces.  Or,  finally,  passing 
westward,  we  find  the  large-jawed,  copper-colored  Indians 
of  the  New  World,  vigoi'ous  in  some  of  the  northern  tribes 
as  animals,  though  feeble  as  men,  but  gradually  sinking  in 
southern  America,  as  among  the  wild  Caribs  or  spotted 
Q.3* 


270  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

Araueans;  till  at  the  extremity  of  the  continent  we  find, 
naked  and  shivering  among  their  snows,  the  hideous,  small, 
eyed,  small-limbed,  flat-headed  Fuegians,  perhaps  the  most 
wretched  of  human  creatures.  And  all  these  varieties  of  the 
species,  in  which  we  find  humanity  "fallen,"  according  to  the 
poet,  "  into  disgrace,"  ai-e  varieties  that  have  lapsed  from  the 
original  Caucasian  type.  They  are  all  the  descendants  of 
man  as  God  created  him ;  but  they  do  not  exemplify  man 
as  God  created  him.  They  do  not  represent,  save  in  hideous 
caricature,  the  glorious  creature  moulded  of  old  by  the 
hand  of  the  Di^■ine  Worker.  They  are  fivllen, — degraded ; 
many  of  them,  as  races,  hopelessly  lost.  For  all  experience 
tierves  to  show,  that  Avhen  a  tribe  of  men  falls  beneath  a 
certain  level,  it  cannot  come  into  competition  with  civilized 
man,  pressing  outwards  from  his  old  centres  to  possess  the 
earth,  without  becoming  extinct  before  him.  Sunk  beneath 
a  certain  level,  as  in  the  forests  of  America,  in  Van  Dieman's 
Land,  in  New  South  Wales,  and  among  the  Bushmen  of 
the  Cape,  the  experience  of  more  than  a  hundred  years 
demonstrates  that  its  destiny  is  extinction,  —  not  restoration. 
Individuals  may  be  recovered  by  the  labors  of  some  zealous 
issionary ;  but  it  is  the  fate  of  the  race,  after  a  few  gen- 
'6i;ations,  to  disappear.  It  has  fallen  too  hopelessly  low  to 
be  restored.  There  remain  curious  traces  in  the  New 
World  of  these  perished  tribes.  The  Bible,  translated  into 
.an  old.  Indian  language,  from  Avhich  the  devoted  David 
Brainerd  taught  so  successfully  a  nation  of  Red  Men,  still 
exists ;  but  it  speaks  in  a  dead  tongue,  which  no  one  can  now 
understand ;  for  the  nation  to  whom  he  preached  has  become 
extinct.  And  Humboldt  tells  us,  in  referring  to  a  perished 
tribe  of  South  America,  that  there  lived  in  1806,  when  he 
visited  their  country,  an  old  parrot  in  Maypures,  wliich 
could  not  be  understood,  because,  as  the  natives  informed 
him,  it  spoke  the  language  of  the  Atures.     Tribes  of  the 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  271 

aborigines  of  Australia  liave  wliolly  disappeared  during  the 
present  generation ;  and  I  remember  seeing  it  stated  in  a 
newspaper  paragraph,  which  appeared  a  few  years  ago,  that 
the  hast  male  survivor  of  the  natives  of  Tasmania  was  at 
that  time  in  the  latter  stages  of  consumption. 

But  if  man,  in  at  least  the  more  degraded  varieties  of 
the  race,  be  so  jjalpably  not  Avhat  the  Creator  originally 
made  liim,  by  whom,  then,  was  he  made  the  poor  lost 
creature  which  in  these  races  we  find  him  to  be  ?  He  was 
made  what  he  is,  I  reply,  by  man  himself;  and  this,  in  many 
instances,  by  a  process  Avhich  we  may  see  every  day  taking 
place  among  ourselves  in  individuals  and  families,  though 
happily,  not  in  races.  Man's  nature  again, — to  employ  the 
condensed  statement  of  the  poet,  —  has  been  bound  fast  in 
fate,  but  his  Avill  has  been  left  free.  He  is  free  either  to 
resign  himself  to  the  indolence  and  self  indulgence  so  natural 
to  the  species ;  or,  "  spurning  delights,  to  live  laborious 
days;" — free  either  to  sink  into  ignorant  sloth,  dependent 
uselessness,  and  self-induced  imbecility,  bodily  and  mental, 
or  to  assert  by  honest  labor  a  noble  independence,  —  to 
seek  after  knowledge  as  for  hidden  treasures,  and,  in  the 
search,  to  sharpen  his  faculties  and  invigorate  his  mind. 
And  while  we  see  around  us  some  men  addressing  them- 
selves with  stout,  brave  hearts  to  what  Carlyle  terms,  with 
homely  vigor,  their  "  heavy  job  of  work,"  and,  by  denying 
themselves  many  an  insidious  indulgence,  doing  it  effectu- 
ally and  well,  and  rearing  up  well-taught  families  in  useful- 
ness and  comfort,  to  be  the  stay  of  the  future,  we  see  other 
men  yielding  to  the  ignoble  solicitations  of  appetite  or  of 
indolence,  and  becoming  worse  than  useless  themselves,  and 
the  parents  of  ignorant,  immoral,  and  worse  than  useless 
families.  The  wandering  vagrants  of  Great  Britain  at  the 
present  time  have  been  estimated  at  from  fifteen  to  twenty 
thousand  souls;   the  hereditary  paupers  of  England,  —  a 


X 


272  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

vastly  more  numerous  class,  —  have  become,  in  a  consider- 
able degree,  a  sept  distinct  from  the  general  community; 
and  in  all  our  large  towns  there  are  certain  per  centages 
of  the  population, — unhappily  ever  increasing  per  centages, 
—  that,  darkened  in  mind  and  embruted  in  sentiment,  are 
widely  recognized  as  emphatically  the  dangerous  classes  of 
the  community.  And  let  us  remember  that  we  are  witness- 
ing in  these  instances  no  new  thing  in  the  history  of  the 
species :  every  period'  since  that  of  the  vagabond  Cain 
has  had  its  waifs  and  stragglers,  who  fell  behind  in  the 
general  inarch.  In  circumstances  such  as  obtained  in  the 
earlier  ages  of  the  human  family,  all  the  existing  nomadcs 
and  paupers  of  our  country  would  have  passed  into  distinct 
races  of  men.  For  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations  their 
forms  and  complexions  Avould  begin  to  tell  of  the  self- 
induced  degradation  that  had  taken  place  in  their  minds ; 
and  in  a  few  ages  more  they  would  have  become  permanent 
varieties  of  the  species.  There  are  cases  in  which  not  more 
than  from  two  to  three  centuries  have  been  found  sufficient 
thoroughly  to  alter  the  original  physiognomy  of  a  race. 
"On  the  plantation  of  Ulster  in  1611,  and  afterwards,  on 
the  success  of  the  British  against  the  rebels  in  1641  and 
1689,"  says  a  shrewd  Avriter  of  the  present  day,  himself  an 
Irishman,  "great  multitudes  of  the  native  Irish  were  diiven 
from  Armagh  and  the  south  of  Down,  into  the  mountainous 
tract  extending  from  the  Barony  of  Fleurs  eastward  to  the 
sea ;  on  the  other  side  of  the  kingdom  the  same  race  were 
exposed  to  the  worst  effects  of  hunger  and  ignorance,  the 
two  great  brutalizers  of  the  human  race.  The  descen- 
\  dants  of  these  exiles  are  now  distinguished  physically  by 
\^great  degradation.  They  are  remarkable  for  open,  project- 
ing mouths,  with  prominent  teeth  and  exposed  gums ;  and 
theilvidvancing  cheek  bones  and  depressed  noses  bear  bar- 
barism on  their  very  front.     In  Sligo  and  northern  Mayo 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  273 

the  consequences  of  the  two  centuries  of  degi-adation  and 
hardship  exhibit  themselves  in  the  whole  physical  condition 
of  the  people,  aifecting  not  only  the  features,  but  the  frame. 
Five  feet  two  inches  on  an  average,  —  pot-bellied,  bow-leg- 
ged, abortively  featured,  their  clothing  a  wisp  of  rags,  — 
these  spectres  of  a  people  that  were  once  well-grown,  able- 
bodied,  and  comely,  stalk  abroad  into  the  daylight  of  civil- 
ization, the  annual  apparition  of  Irish  ugliness  and  Irish 
want," 

Such  is  man  as  man  himself  has  made  him,  —  not  man  as 
he  came  from  the  hand  of  the  Creator.  In  many  instances 
the  degradation  has  been  voluntary  ;  in  others  it  has  been 
forced  iipon  families  and  races  by  the  iron  hand  of  oppres- 
sion ;  in  almost  all, — whether  self-chosen  by  the  parents 
or  imposed  upon  them,  —  the  children  and  the  children's 
children  have,  as  a  matter  of  inevitable  necessity,  been 
born  to  it.  ,,r.oi-,  whatever  we -may  think  of  the  Scriptural 
doctrine_on  this  special  head,  it  is  a  fact  broad  and  palpable 
in  the  economy  of  nature,  that  parents  do  occupy  a  federal 
position ;  and  that  the  lapsed  progenitors,  when  cut  oif 
from  civilization  and  all  external  interference  of  a  missionary 
character,  become  the  founders  of  a  lapsed  race.  The 
iniquities  of  the  parents  are  visited  upon  the  children. 
And  in  all  such  instances  it  is  man  left  to  the  freedom  of 
his  owai  will  that  is  the  deteriorator  of  man.  The  doctrine 
of  the  Fall,  in  its  purely  theologic  aspect,  is  a  doctrine 
which  must  be  apprehended  by  faith ;  but  it  is  at  least 
something  to  find  that  the  analogies  of  science,  instead  of 
running  counter  to  it,  run  in  exactly  the  same  line.  It  is 
one  of  the  inevitable  consequences  of  that  nature  of  man 
which  the  Creator  "boimd  fast  in  fate,"  while  he  left  free 
his  will,  that  the  free  will  of  the  parent  should  become  the 
destiny  of  the  child. 

But  the  subject  is  one  in  which  we  can  see  our  way  as 


274  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS   BEARINGS 

but  "  tlu'ough  a  glass  darkly."  Nay,  it  is  possible  that  the 
master  problem  which  it  involves  no  created  intelligence 
can  thoroughly  unlock.  It  has  been  well  said,  that  the 
"  poet's  heart  "  is  informed  by  a  "  terrible  sagacity  ;  "  and 
I  am  at  times  disposed  to  regard  Milton's  conception  of  the 
perplexity  of  the  fallen  spirits,  v*'hen  reasoning  on  "  fixed 
fate,  free  will,  foreknoAvledge  absolute,"  and  finding  "no 
end  in  wandering  mazes  lost,"  much  rather  as  a  sober  truth 
caught  from  the  invisible  world,  than  as  merely  an  inge- 
nious fancy.  The  late  Robert  Montgomery  has  rather  un- 
happily chosen  Satan  as  one  of  the  themes  of  his  muse ; 
and  in  his  long  poem,  designated  in  its  second  title  "Intel- 
lect without  God,"  he  has  set  that  personage  a-reasoning 
in  a  style  which,  I  fear,  more  completely  demonsti'ates  the 
absence  of  God  than  the  presence  of  intellect.  It  has, 
however,  sometimes  occurred  to  me,  that  a  poet  of  the 
larger  calibre,  who  to  the  Divine  faculty  and  vision  added 
such  a  knowledge  of  geologic  science  as  that  which  Virgil 
possessed  of  the  Natural  History  of  his  time,  or  as  that 
which  Milton  possessed  of  the  general  learning  of  his, 
might  find,  in  a  somewhat  similar  subject,  the  materials  of  a 
poem  which  "  posterity  would  not  willingly  let  die."  There 
is  one  of  the  satirists  justly  severe  on  a  class  of  critics 

"Who,  drily  plain,  without  invention's  aid,    - 
Write  dull  receipts  how  poems  may  be  made." 

But  at  some  risk  of  rendering  myself  obnoxious  to  his 
censure,  I  shall  attempt  indicating  at  least  the  general 
scope  and  character:  of  what  the  schoolmen  might  term 
a  2^ossible  poem ;  which,  if  vivified  by  the  genius  of  some 
of  the  higher  masters  of  the  lyre,  broad  of  faculty,  and 
at  once  great  poets  and  great  men,  might  prove  one 
pi-ecious  boon  more  to  the  world,  suited,  conformably  to 
the  special  demands  of  these  latter  times,  to 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  275 

"  assert  Eternal  Providence, 
And  justify  the  waj's  of  God  to  man." 

There  has  been  war  among  the  intelligences  of  God's 
spiritual  creation.     Lucifer,  son  of  the  morning,  has  fallen 
like  fire  from  heaven ;  and  our  present  earth,  existing  as 
a  halfextinguished  hell,  has  received  him  and  his  angels. 
Dead  matter  exists,  and  in  the  unembodied  spirits  vitality 
exists ;    but  not  yet  in  all  the  universe  of  God  has  the     ' 
vitality  been  united  to  the  matter ;  animal  life,  to  even  the 
profound   apprehension  of  the  fallen  angel,  is   an   incon- 
ceivable  idea.     Meanwhile,   as  the   scarce   reckoned   cen- 
turies roll  by,  vacantly  and  dull,  like  the  cheerless  days 
and  nights  over  the  head  of  some  unhappy  captive,  the 
miserable  prisoners  of  our  planet  become  aware  that  there 
is  a  slow  change  taking  place  in   the   condition  of  their 
prison-house.     Where  a  low,  dark  archipelago  of  islands 
raise  their  flat  backs  over  the  thermal  waters,  the  heat 
glows  less  intensely  than  of  old ;  the  red  fire  bursts  forth 
less  frequently ;  the  dread  earthquake  shakes  more  rarely  ; 
save  in  a  few  centres  of  intenser  action,  the  great  deep  no 
longer  boils  like  a  pot ;  and  though  the  heavens  are  still 
shut  out  by  a  gray  ceiling  of  thick  vapor,  through  which 
sun  or  moon  never  yet  appeared,  a  less  gloomy  twilight 
struggles  at  noonday  through  the   enveloping  cloud,  and 
falls  more  cheerfully  than  heretofore  upon  land  and  sea. 
At  length  there  comes  a  morning  in  which  great  ocean 
and  the   scattered  islands   declare  that  God   the  Creator 
had  descended  to  visit  the  earth.    The  hitherto  verdureless 
land  bears  the  green  flush  of  vegetation;    and  there  are 
creeping   things   among   the   trees.     Nor  is   the  till  now 
unexampled  mystery  of  animal  life  absent  from  the  soimds 
and  bays.     It  is  the  highest  intelligences  that  manifest  tiie 
deepest  interest  in  the  works  of  the  All  Wise.     Nor  can 
we  doubt  that  on  that  morning  of  creative  miracle,  in  which 


276     ■  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS   BEARINGS 

matter  and  vitality  were  first  united  in  the  bonds  of  a 
strange  wedlock,  the  comprehensive  intellect  of  the  great 
fallen  spirit  —  profound  and  active  beyond  the  lot  of  hu- 
manity —  would  have  found  ample  employment  in  attempt- 
ing to  fathom  the  vast  mystery,  and  in  vainly  asking  what 
these  strange  things  might  mean. 

With  how  much  of  wonder,  as  scene  succeeded  scene, 
and   creation   followed   creation,  —  as  life   sprang   out   of 
death,  and  death  out  of  life,  —  must  not  that  acute  Intel- 
licrence  have  watched  the  course  of  the  Divine  Worker, 
—  scornful  of  spirit   and   full  of  enmity,  and  yet  aware, 
in  the  inner  depths  of  his  intellect,  that  what  he  dared 
insultingly   to    depreciate,  he   yet   failed,   in   its   ultimate 
end  and  purpose,  adequately  to  comprehend !     Standing 
in  the  presence  of  unsolved  mystery,  under  the  chill  and 
witherinsr  shadoAV  of  that  secret  of  the  Lord  Avhich  was 
not  with  him,  how  thoroughly  must  he  not  have  seen,  and 
with   what   bitter   malignity  felt,  that   the   grasp   of  the 
Almighty  was  still  upon  him,  and  that  in  the  ever  varying 
problem  of  creation,  Avhich,  with  all  his  powers,  he  failed 
to  unlock,  and  which,  as  age  succeeded  age,  remained  an 
unsolved  problem  still,  the  Divine  Master  against  whom  he 
had  rebelled,  but  from  whose  presence  it  was  in  vain  to 
flee,  emphatically  spake  to  him,  as  in  an  after  age  to  the 
patriarch  Job,  and,  with  the  quiet  dignity  of  the  Infinite, 
challensred  him  either  to  do  or  to  know !     "  Shall  he  that 
contendeth  with   the   Almighty   instruct   him?      He   that 
reproveth  God,  let  him  answer.     Knowest  thou  the  ordi- 
nances of  Heaven  ?  or  canst  thou  set  the  dominion  thereof 
hi   the   earth?"     With   what   wild   thoughts    must    that 
restless    and    unhappy   spirit    have    wandered    amid    the 
tanded   mazes   of   the   old   carboniferous   forests !     With 
what  bitter  mockeries  must  he  have  watched  the  fierce 
wars  which  raged  in  thek  sluggish  waters,  among  ravenous 


ON   THE   TWO    THEOLOGIES.  277 

creatures  horrid  with  trenchant  teeth,  barbed  sting,  and 
sharp  spine,  and  enveloped  in  gUttering  armor  of  plate  and 
scale!     And  how,   as  generation  after  generation   passed 
away,  and  ever  and  anon  the  ocean  rolled  where  the  land 
had  been,  or  the  land  rose  to  possess  the  ancient  seats  of 
the  ocean,  —  how,  when  looking  back   upon   myriads   of 
ages,  and  when  calling  np  in  memory  what  once  had  been, 
the  features  of  earth  seemed  scarce  more  fixed  to  his  view 
than  the  features  of  the  sky  in  a  day  of  dappled,  breeze- 
borne   clouds,  —  how  must   he   have   felt,   as    he   became 
conscious  that  the  earth  was  fast  ripening,  and  that,  as  its 
foundations  became  stable  on  the  abyss,  it  was  made  by 
the  Creator  a  home  of  higher  and  yet  higher  forms  of 
existence,  —  how  must  he  have  felt,  if,  like  some  old  augur 
looking  into  the  inner  mysteries  of  animal  life,  with  their 
strange  prophecies,  the  truth  had  at  length  burst  upon  him, 
that  reasoning,  accountable  man  was  fast  coming  to  the 
birth,  —  man,  the  moral  agent,  —  man,  the  ultimate  Avork 
and  end  of  creation,  —  man,  a  creature  in  whom,  as  in  the 
inferior  animals,  vitality  was  to  be  united  to  matter,  but 
in  whom  also,  as  in  no  inferior  animal,  responsibility  was 
to   be   united   to   vitality!     How  must    expectancy   have 
quickened,  —  how   must   solicitude    have    grown,  —  when, 
after  the  dynasty  of  the  fish  had  been  succeeded  by  the 
dynasty  of  the  reptile,   and   that  of  the   reptile   by   the 
dynasty  of  the  sagacious  mammal,  a  time  had  at  length 
arrived  when  the  earth  had  become  fixed  and  stable,  and 
the  proud  waves  of  ocean  had  been  stayed,  —  when,  after 
species  and  genera  in  both  kingdoms  had  been  increased 
tenfold   beyond   the   precedent   of   any   former    age,    the 
Creative  Hand   seemed  to  pause  in  its  Avorking,  and  the 
finished  creation  to  demand  its  lord!     Even  at  this  late 
period,  how  strange  may  not  the  doubts  and  uncertainties 

have  been  that  remained  to  darken  the  mind  of  the  lost 
24 


278  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

Spirit !  It  was  according  to  his  experience,  —  stretched 
baclcAvards  to  the  first  beginnings  of  organic  vitality,  and 
coextensive,  at  a  still  earlier  period,  with  God's  spiritual 
univei'se,  —  that  all  animals  should  die,  —  that  all  moral 
agents  should  live.  Hoav,  in  this  new  creature,  —  this 
prodigy  of  creation,  who  Avas  to  unite  what  never  before 
had  been  united,  —  the  nature  of  the  animals  that  die  Avith 
the  standing  and  responsibility  of  the  moral  agents  that 
live^ —  how,  in  this  partaker  of  the  double  nature,  was  the 
discrepancy  to  be  reconciled  ?  How,  in  this  matter,  were 
-  the  opposite  claims  of  life  and  death  to  be  adjusted,  or 
the  absolute  immortality^  which  cannot  admit  of  degrees, 
to  be  made  to  meet  with  and  shade  into  the  mortality 
which,  let  us  extend  the  terra  of  previous  vitality  as  we 
may,  must  forever  involve  the  antagonistic  idea  of  final 
annihilation  and  the  ceasing  to  be  ? 

At  length  creation  receives  its  deputed  monarch.  For, 
moulded  by  God's  own  finger,  and  in  God's  own  likeness, 
man  enters  upon  the  scene,  an  exquisite  creature,  rich  in 
native  faculty,  pregnant  with  the  yet  undeveloped  seeds 
of  all  Avisdom  and  knowledge,  tender  of  heart  and  pure 
of  spirit,  formed  to  hold  high  communion  Avith  his  Creator, 
and  to  breathe  abroad  his  soul  in  sympathy  over  all  that 
the  Creator  had  made.  And  yet,  left  to  the  freedom  of 
his  OAA'n  Avill,  there  is  a  Aveakness  in  the  flesh  that  betrays 
his  earthly  lineage.  It  is  into  the  dust  of  the  ground  that 
the  living  soul  has  been  breathed.  The  son  of  the  soil, 
Avho,  like  the  inferior  animals,  his  subjects,  sleeps  and 
wakes,  and  can  feel  thirst  and  hunger,  and  the  Aveariness 
of  toil,  and  the  SAveets  of  rest,  and  Avho  come  imder  the 
general  laAV,  "increase  and  multiply,"  promulgated  of  old 
to  them,  stands  less  firmly  than  the  immaterial  spirits  stood 
of  old ;  and  yet  even  they  rebelled  against  Heaven,  and 
fell.     There  aAvakes  a  grim  hope  in  the  sullen  lord  of  the 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  279 

first  revolt.  Ages  beyond  tale  or  reckoning  has  this 
temple  of  creation  been  in  building.  Long  have  its  mute 
prophecies  in  fishes  and  in  creeping  things,  in  bird  and  in 
beast,  told  of  coming  man,  its  final  object  and  end.  And 
now  there  needeth  but  one  blow,  and  the  whole  edificex^ 
is  destroyed,  God's  purposes  marred  and  frustrated,  and 
this  new  favorite  of  earth  dashed  back  to  the  dust  out 
of  which  he  was  created,  and  brought,  like  the  old,  extinct 
races,  imder  the  eternal  law  of  death.  Armed  with  the 
experience  in  evil  of  unsummed  ages,  the  Tempter  plies 
his  work :  nor  is  it  to  low  or  ignoble  appetites  that  he 
appeals.  It  is  to  the  newly-formed  creature's  thirst  for 
knowledge  ;  it  is  to  his  love  stronger  than  death.  The  Aviles 
of  the  Old  Serpent  j^revail ;  man  falls  prostrate  before 
him ;  creation  trembles ;  and  then  from  amid  the  trees 
of  the  garden  comes  the  voice  of  God.  And  lo !  in 
an  enigma  mysterious  and  dark  a  new  dispensation  of 
prophecy  begins.  Victims  bleed  ;  altars  smoke  ;  the  tab- 
ernacle arises  amid  the  white  tents  of  the  desert ;  the 
temple  ascends  all  glorious  on  the  heights  of  Mount  Zion ; 
15rophet  after  prophet  declares  his  message.  At  length, 
in  the  fulness  of  time,  the  Messiah  comes ;  and,  in  satisfy- 
ing the  law,  and  in  fulfilling  all  righteousness,  and  in 
bringing  life  and  immortality  to  light,  abundantly  shows 
forth  that  the  terminal  dynasty  of  all  creation  had  been  of 
old  foreordained,  ere  the  foundations  of  the  world,  to 
possess  for  its  eternal  lord  and  monarch,  not  primeval  man, 
created  in  the  image  of  God,  but  God,  made  manifest  in 
the  flesh,  in  the  form  of  primeval  man.  But  how  breaks 
on  the  bafiied  Tempter  the  sublime  revelation  ?  Wearily^ 
did  he  tojl,  —  darkly  did  he  devise,  and  take,  in  his  great 
misery,  deep  coimsel  against  the  Almighty  ;  and  yet  all 
the  while,  while  striving  and  resisting  as  an  enemy,  has 
he  been    wielded  as   a  tool;   when,  glaring  aloof  in  his 


280  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

proud  rebellion,  the  grasp  of  the  Omnipotent  has  been 
upon  him,  and  the  Eternal  Purposes  have  encompassed 
him,  and  he  has  been  working  out,  all  unwittingly,  the 
foreordained  decree.      "For  our  God  maketh  the  wrath 

\      of  the  wicked  to  praise   him,  and  the  remainder  thereof 

/       doth  he  restrain." 

But  enough,  for  the  present,  of  the  poems  that  might 
be.  Permit  me,  however,  to  add,  in  the  words  of  one  of 
the  most  suggestive,  and  certainly  not  least  powerful,  of 
English  thinkers,  that  "  a  fall  of  some  sort  or  other,  —  the 
creation,  as  it  were,  of  the  non-absolute,  —  is  the  funda- 
mental postulate  of  the  moral  histoiy  of  man.  Without 
this  hypothesis,"  he  adds,  "  man  is  unintelligible,  —  with  it 
every  phenomenon  is  explicable.  The  mystery  itself  is  too 
profound  for  human  insight."  Such,  in  this  matter,  was 
the  ultimate  judgment  of  a  man  who  in  youth  had  enter- 
tained very  opposite  views,  —  the  poet  Coleridge. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  inferences  of  the  geologist 
militate  against  those  of  the  theologian.  Nay,  not  those 
of  our  higher  geologists  and  higher  theologians,  —  not 
what  our  Murchisons  and  Sedgwicks  infer  in  the  one  field, 
with  what  our  Chalmerses  and  Isaac  Taylors  infer  in  the 
other.  Between  the  Word  and  the  Works  of  God  there 
can  be  no  actual  discrepancies ;  and  the  seeming  ones  are 
discernible  only  by  the  men  who  see  worst. 

"  Mote-like  they  flicker  in  unsteady  eyes. 
And  weakest  his  who  best  descries." 

The  geologist,  as  certainly  as  the  theologian,  has  a  province 
exclusively  his  own ;  and  were  the  theologian  ever  to  re- 
member that  the  Scriptures  could  not  possibly  have  been 
given  to  us  as  revelations  of  scientific  truth,  seeing  that  a 
single  scientific  truth  they  never  yet  revealed,  and  the 
geologist  that  it  must  be  in  vain  to  seek  in  science  those 


ON    THE    TWO    THEOLOGIES.  281 

truths  which  lead  to  salvation,  seeing  that  in  science  these 
truths  were  never  yet  found,  there  would  be  little  danger 
even  of  difference  among  them,  and  none  of  collision.  Nay, 
there  is,  I  doubt  not,  a  time  coming  in  which  the  Butlers 
and  Chalmerses  of  the  future  will  be  content  to  recognize 
the  geologic  field  as  that  of  their  richest  and  most  pregnant 
analogies.  It  is  with  the  history  of  the  pre-Adamic  ages 
that  geology  sets  itself  to  deal ;  and  by  carefully  conning 
the  ancient  characters  graven  in  the  rocks,  and  by  decipher- 
ing the  strange  inscriptions  which  they  compose,  it  greatly 
extends  the  record  of  God's  doings  upon  the  earth.  And 
what  more  natural  to  expect,  or  rational  to  hold,  than  that 
the  Unchangeable  One  should  have  wrought  in  all  tune 
after  one  general  type  and  pattern,  or  than  that  we  may 
seek,  in  the  hope  of  finding,  meet  correspondences  and 
striking  analogies  between  his  revealed  workings  during 
the  human  period,  and  his  previous  workings  of  old  during 
the  geologic  periods, — correspondences  and  analogies  suited 
to  establish  tho  identity  of  the  worker,  and,  of  course,  from 
that  identity  to  demonstrate  the  authenticity  of  the  revela- 
tion ?  Permit  me  to  bring  out,  in  conclusion,  what  I  have 
often  thought  on  this  subject,  but  have  not  been  able  so 
tersely  to  express,  in  a  brief  quotation  from  one  of  the 
most  instructive  works  of  the  present  age,  the  "  Method 
of  the  Divine  Government,"  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  M'Cosh :  — 
"Science  has  a  foundation,"  says  this  solid  thinker  and  >- 
accomplished  writer,  "  and  so  has  religion.  Let  them  unitpK, 
their  foundations,  and  the  basis  Avill  be  broader,  and  they  ^ 
will  be  two  compartments  of  one  great  fabric  reared  to  the 
glory  of  God.  Let  the  one  be  the  outer  and  the  other 
the  inner  court.  Li  the  one  let  all  look,  and  admire,  and 
adore;  and  in  the  other  let  those  who  have  faith  kneel, 
and  pray,  and  praise.  Let  the  one  be  the  sanctuary  where 
human  learning  may  present  its  richest  incense  as  an 
24* 


282  GEOLOGY    IN    ITS    BEARINGS.    ETC. 

offering  to  God,  and  the  other,  the  holiest  of  all,  separated 
from  it  by  a  veil  now  rent  in  tAvain,  and  in  which,  on  a 
blood-sprinkled  mercy  seat,  we  pour  out  the  love  of  a  rec- 
onciled heart,  and  hear  the  oracles  of  the  living  God." 


LECTURE  SEVENTH. 

THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 
PART  I. 

There  are  events  so  striking  in  themselves  or  from  their 
accompaniments,  that  they  powerfully  impress  the  memories 
of  children  but  little  removed  from  inlancy,  and  are  retained 
by  them  in  a  sort  of  troubled  recollection  ever  after,  how- 
ever extended  their  term  of  life.  Samuel  Johnson  was  only 
two  and  a  half  years  old  when,  in  accordance  with  the 
belief  of  the  time,  he  was  touched  by  Queen  Anne  for  the 
"  Evil ; "  but  more  than  seventy  years  after,  he  could  call 
up  in  memory  a  dream-like  recollection  of  the  lady  dressed 
in  a  black  hood,  and  glittering  with  diamonds,  into  whose 
awful  presence  he  had  been  ushered  on  that  occasion,  and 
who  had  done  for  the  cure  of  his  complaint  all  that  legiti- 
mate royalty  could  do.  And  an  ancient  lady  of  the  north 
country,  who  had  been  carried,  when  a  child,  in  her  nurse's 
arms,  to  witness  the  last  witch  execution  that  took  place  in 
Scotland,  could  distinctly  tell,  after  the  lapse  of  nearly  a 
century,  that  the  fire  was  surrounded  by  an  awe-struck 
crowd,  and  that  the  smoke  of  the  burning,  when  blown 
about  her  by  a  cross  breeze,  had  a  foul  and  suffocating 
odor.  In  this  respect  the  memory  of  infant  tribes  and 
nations  seems  to  resemble  that  of  individuals.  There  are 
characters  and  events  Avhich  impi-ess  it  so  strongly,  that 
they  seem  never  to  be  forgotten,  but  live  as  traditions, 
sometimes  mayhap  very  vague,  and  much  modified  by  the 


284  THE   NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

inventions  of  an  after  time,  but  which,  in  floating  down- 
wards to  late  asres,  always  bear  about  thera  a  certain 
strong  impress  of  their  pristine  reality.  They  are  shadows 
that  have  become  ill  defined  from  the  vast  distance  of  the 
objects  that  cast  them,  —  like  the  shadows  of  great  birds 
flung,  in  a  summer's  day,  from  the  blue  depths  of  the  sky 
to  the  landscape  lar  below,  —  but  whose  very  presence, 
however  difl"used  they  may  have  become,  testifies  to  the 
existence  of  the  remote  realities  from  which  they  are 
thro^^^l,  and  without  which  they  could  have  had  no  being 
at  all.  The  old  mythologies  are  filled  with  shadowy  tradi- 
tions of  this  kind, —  shadows  of  the  world's  "gray  fathers," 
• — which,  like  those  shadows  seen  reflected  on  clouds  by 
travellers  who  ascend  lofty  mountains,  are  exaggerated 
into  the  most  gigantic  proportions,  and  bear  radiant  glories 
around  their  heads. 

There  is,  however,  one  special  tradition  which  seems  to 
be  more  deeply  impressed  and  mor^  widely  spread  than 
any  of  the  others.  The  destruction  of  well  nigh  the  whole 
human  race,  in  an  early  age  of  the  world's  history,  by  a 
great  deluge,  appears  to  have  so  impressed  the  minds  of 
the  few  survivors,  and  seems  to  have  been  handed  dowTi 
to  their  children,  in  consequence,  with  such  terror-struck 
impressiveness,  that  their  remote  descendants  of  the  present 
day  have  not  even  yet  forgotten  it.  It  appears  in  almost 
every  mythology,  and  lives  in  the  most  distant  countries, 
and  amonoj  the  most  barbarous  tribes.  It  was  the  laudable 
ambition  of  Humboldt,  —  first  entertained  at  a  very  early 
period  of  life,  —  to  penetrate  into  distant  regions,  unknown 
to  the  natives  of  Europe  at  the  time,  that  he  might  acquaint 
himself,  in  fields  of  research  altogether  fresh  and  new,  with 
men  and  with  nature  in  their  most  primitive  conditions. 
In  carrying  out  his  design,  he  journeyed  far  into  the 
woody  wilderness  that  surrounds  the  Orinoco,  and  found 


THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE.  285 

himself  among  tribes  of  wild  Indians  whose  very  names 
■ft-ere  unknown  to  the  civilized  world.  And  yet  among 
even  these  forgotten  races  of  the  human  family  he  found 
the  tradition  of  the  deluge  still  fresh  and  distinct;  not 
confined  to  single  tribes,  but  general  among  the  scattered 
nations  of  that  great  region,  and  intertwined  with  curious 
additions,  suggestive  of  the  inventions  of  classic  mythology 
in  the  Old  World.  "The  belief  in  a  srreat  delu2:e,"  we 
find  him  saying,  "is  not  confined  to  one  nation  singly, — 
the  Tamanacs :  it  makes  part  of  a  system  of  historical 
tradition,  of  which  we  find  scattered  notions  among  the 
Maypures  of  the  great  cataracts ;  among  the  Indians  of 
the  Rio  Erevato,  which  runs  into  the  Caura;  and  among 
almost  all  the  tribes  of  the  Upper  Orinoco.  When  the 
Tamanacs  are  asked  hoAV  the  human  race  survived  this 
great  deluge,  —  'the  age  of  loater''  of  the  Mexicans,  —  they 
say,  a  man  and  woman  saved  themselves  on  a  high  moun- 
tain called  Tamanacu,  situated  on  the  banks  of  the  Asiveru, 
and,  casting  behind  them  over  their  heads  the  fruits  of  the 
mauritia  palm-tree,  they  saw  the  seeds  contained  in  these 
fruits  produce  men  and  women,  who  re-peopled  the  earth. 
Thus,"  adds  the  philosophic  traveller,  "  we  find  in  all  sim- 
plicity, among  nations  noAv  in  a  savage  state,  a  tradition 
which  the  Greeks  embellished  with  all  the  charms  of 
imagination."  The  resemblance  is  certainly  very  striking. 
"  Quit  the  temple,"  said  the  Oracle  to  Deucalion  and 
Pyrrha,  wiien  they  had  consulted  it,  after  the  great  del- 
uge, regarding  the  mode  in  which  the  earth  was  to  be 
re-peopled,  —  "  vail  your  heads,  unloose  your  girdles,  and 
throw  behind  your  backs  the  bones  of  your  grandmother." 
Rightly  interpreting  what  seemed  darkest  and  most  ob- 
scure in  the  reply,  they  took  "  stones  of  the  earth,"  and, 
casting  them  behind  them,  the  stones  flung  by  Deucalion 
became  men,  and  those  by  Pyrrha  became  M'omen,  and 


286  THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE. 

thus  the  disfurnished  Avorld  was  peopled  anew.  The  naid- 
gator  always  regards  himself  as  sure  of  his  position  when 
he  has  two  landmarks  to  determine  it  by,  or  Avhen  in  the 
open  ocean  he  can  ascertain,  not  only  his  latitude,  but  his 
longitude  also.  And  this  curious  American  tradition  seems 
to  have  its  two  such  marks,  —  its  two  bisecting  lines  of 
determination,  —  to  identify  it  with  the  classic  tradition 
of  the  Old  World  that  refers  evidently  to  the  same  great 
event. 

There  are  other  portions  of  America  in  which  the  tradi- 
tion of  the  Flood  is  still  more  distinct  than  among  the 
forests  of  the  Orinoco.  It  is  related  by  Herrera,  one  of 
the  Spanish  historians  of  America,  that  even  the  most 
barbarous  of  the  Brazilians  had  some  knowledge  of  a 
general  deluge ;  that  in  Peru  the  ancient  Indians  reported, 
that  many  years  before  there  were  any  Incas,  all  the  people 
were  drowned  by  a  great  flood,  save  six  persons,  the  pro- 
genitors of  the  existing  races,  who  were  saved  on  a  float ; 
that  among  the  Mechoachans  it  was  believed  that  a  single 
family  Avas  preserved,  during  the  outburst  of  the  waters,  in 
an  ark,  with  a  sufiicient  number  of  animals  to  replenish  the 
new  Avorld ;  and,  more  curious  still,  that  it  used  to  be  told 
by  the  original  inhabitants  of  Cuba,  that  "an  old  man, 
knowing  the  deluge  was  to  come,  built  a  great  ship,  and 
went  into  it  with  his  family  and  abundance  of  animals ;  and 
that,  wearying  during  the  continuance  of  the  flood,  he  sent 
out  a  ci'ow,  which  at  first  did  not  return,  staying  to  feed 
oiTth"©-  dead  bodies,  but  afterwards  returned  bearing  with 
it  a  green  branch."  The  resemblance  borne  by  this  last 
tradition  to  the  Mosaic  narrative  is  so  close  as  to  awaken  a 
doubt  whether  it  may  not  have  been  but  a  mere  recollection 
of  the  teaching  of  some  early  missionary.  Xor  can  its 
genuineness  now  be  tested,  seeing  that  the  race  which 
cherished  it  has  been  long  since  extinct.     It  may  be  stated, 


THE   NOACHIAN   DELUGE  287 

however,  that  a  similar  suspicion  crossed  the  mind  of  Hum- 
boldt when  he  was  engaged  in  collecting  the  traditions  of 
the  Indians  of  the  Orinoco ;  but  that  on  further  reflection 
and  inquiry  he  dismissed  the  doubt  as  groundless.  He 
even  set  himself  to  examine  whether  the  district  was  not  a 
fossiliferous  one,  and  whether  beds  of  sea  shells,  or  deposits 
^  charged  with  -the  petrified  remains  of  corals  or  of  fishes, 
might  not  have  originated  among  the  aborigines  some 
mere  myth  of  a  great  inundation  sufiicient  to  account  for 
appearances  in  the  rocks.  But  he  found  that  the 
region  Avas  mainly  a  primary  one,  in  which  he  could  detect 
only  a  single  patch  of  sedimentary  rock,  existing  as  an 
unfossiliferous  sandstone.  And  so,  though  little  prejudiced 
in  favor  of  the  Mosaic  record,  he  could  not  avoid  arriving 
at  the  conclusion,  simply  in  his  character  as  a  philosojjhic 
inquirer,  who  had  no  other  object  than  to  attain  to  the 
real  and  the  true,  that  the  legend  of  the  wild  Maypures 
and  Taraanacs  regarding  a  great  destructive  deluge  was 
simply  one  of  the  many  forms  of  that  oldest  of  traditions 
which  appears  to  be  Avell  nigh  coextensive  with  the  human 
family,  and  Avhich,  in  all  its  varied  editions,  seems  to  point 
at  one  and  the  same  signal  event.  Very  varied  some  of 
these  editions  are.  The  inhabitants  of  Tahiti  tell,  for  in- 
stance, that  the  Supreme  God,  a  long  time  ago,  being 
angry,  dragged  the  earth  through  the  sea,  but  that  by  a 
happy  accident  t/ieir  island  broke  off  and  was  preserved ; 
the  Indians  of  Terra  Firma  believe,  that  when  the  great 
deluge  took  jilace,  one  man,  with  his  wife  and  children, 
escaped  in  a  canoe ;  and  the  Indians  of  the  North  American 
lakes  hold,  that  the  father  of  all  their  tribes  being  warned 
in  a  dream  that  a  flood  was  coming,  built  a  raft,  on  which 
he  preserved  his  family,  and  pairs  of  all  the  animals,  and 
which  drifted  about  for  many  months,  until  at  length  a 


288  THE    NOACHIAN   DELUGE. 

new  earth  was  made  for  their  reception  by  the  "Mighty 
Man  above." 

In  that  Avidely  extended  portion  of  the  Old  Woi'ld  over 
wliich  Christianity  has  spread  in  its  three  great  types, — 
Greek,  Romish,  and  Protestant,  —  and  in  the  scarce  less 
extended  portion  occupied  by  the  followers  of  Mohammed, 
the  Scriptural  account  of__the  deluge,  or  -the  imperfect 
reflection_.of  it  borrowed  by  the  Koran,  has,  of  course, 
supplanted  the  old  traditions.  But  outside  these  regions 
we  find  the  traditions  existing  still.  One  of  the  sacred 
books  of  the  Barsees  (representatives  of  the  ancient  Per- 
sians) records,  that  "  the  world  having  been  corrupted  by 
Ahriman  the  Evil  One,  it  was  thought  necessary  to  bring 
over  it  a  universal  flood  of  waters,  that  all  impurity  might 
be  washed  aAvay.  Accordingly  the  rain  came  down  in 
drops  as  large  as  the  head  of  a  bull,  until  the  eai*th  was 
wholly  covered  with  water,  and  all  the  creatures  of  the 
Evil  One  perished.  And  then  the  flood  gradually  subsided, 
and  first  the  mountains,  and  next  the  plains,  appeared  once 
more."  In  the  Scandinavian  Edda,  between  whose  wild 
fables  and  those  of  the  sacred  books  of  the  Parsees  there 
has  been  a  resemblance  traced  by  accomplished  antiquaries 
such  as  Mallet,  the  tradition  of  the  deluge  takes  a  singularly 
monstrous  form.  On  the  death  of  the  great  giant  Ymir, 
whose  flesh  and  bones  form  the  rocks  and  soils  of  the 
earth,  and  who  was  slain  by  the  early  gods,  his  blood, 
which  now  constitutes  the  ocean,  rushed  so  copiously  out 
of  his  wounds,  that  all  the  old  race  of  the  lesser  giants,  his 
offspring,  were  drowned  in  the  flood  Avhich  it  occasioned, 
save  one ;  and  he,  by  escaping  on  board  his  bark  with  his 
wife,  outlived  the  deluge.  The  tradition  here  is  evidently 
allegorized,  but  it  is  by  no  means  lost  in  the  allegory.  '^ 

Sir  William  Jones,  perhaps  the  most  learned  and  accom- 


THE   NO  ACHI  AN    DELUGE.  289 

plished  man  of  his  age  (such  at  least  was  the  estimate  of 
Johnson),  and  the  first  "vvho  fairly  opened  up  the  great 
storehouse  of  eastern  antiquities,  describes  the  tradition 
of  the  deluge  as  prevalent  also  in  the  vast  Chinese  empire, 
with  its  three  hundred  millions  of  people.  He  states  that 
it  was  there  believed  that,  just  ere  the  ajipearance  of  Fohi 
in  the  mountains,  a  miglity  flood,  which  first  "flowed 
abundantly^  and  then  subsided,  covered  for  a  time  the 
whole  earth,  and  separated  the  higher  from  the  lower  age 
of  mankind."  The  Hindu  tradition,  as  related  by  Sir 
William,  though  disfigured  by  strange  additions,  is  still 
more  explicit.  An  evil  demon  having  purloined  the  sacred 
books  from  Brahraa/tKe  Avhole  race  of  men  becanie  corrupt 
excepf  the  seven  Nishis,  and  in  especial  the  holy  Satyavrata, 
the  prince  of  a  maritime  region,  who,  when  one  day 
bathing  in  a  river,  was  visited  by  the  god  Vishnu  in  the 
shape  of  a  fish,  and  thus  addressed  by  him :  —  "  In  seven 
days  all  creatures  who  have  offended  me  shall  be  destroyed 
by  a  deluge ;  but  thou  shalt  be  secured  in  a  capacious 
vessel,  miraculously  formed.  Take,  therefore,  all  kinds  of 
medicinal  herbs,  and  esculent  grain  for  food,  and,  together 
with  the  seven  holy  men,  your  respective  wives,  and  pairs 
of  all  animals,  enter  the  ark  without  fear :  then  shalt  thou 
know  God  face  to  face,  and  all  thy  questions  shall  be 
answered,"  The  god  then  disappeared  ;  and  after  seven 
days,  during  which  Satyavrata  had  conformed  in  all  re- 
spects to  the  instructions  given  him,  the  ocean  began  to 
overflow  the  coasts,  and  the  earth  to  be  flooded  by  constant 
rains,  when  a  large  vessel  was  seen  coming  floating  shore- 
wards  on  the  rising  waters ;  into  which  the  Prince  and  the 
seven  virtuous  Xisliis  entered,  with  their  wives,  all  laden 
with  plants  and  grain,  and  accompanied  by  the  animals. 
During  the  deluge  Yishnu  preserved  the  ark  by  again 
taking  the  form  of  a  fish,  and  tying  it  fast  to  himself;  and 
25 

O 


290  THE   NOACHIAN   DELUGE, 

when  the  Avaters  had  subsided,  he  communicated  the  con- 
tents of  the  sacred  books  to  the  holy  Satyavrata,  after 
first  slaying  the  demon  who  had  stolen  them.  It  is  added, 
however,  that  the  good  man  having,  on  one  occasion  long 
after,  by  "the  act  of  destiny,"  drunk  mead,  he  became 
senseless,  and  lay  asleep  naked,  and  that  Charraa,  one  of 
three  sons  Avho  had  been  born  to  him,  finding  him  in  that 
sad  state,  called  on  his  two  brothers  to  witness  the  shame 
of  their  father,  and  said  to  them.  What  has  now  befallen  ? 
In  what  state  is  this  our  sire  ?  But  by  the  two  brothers, 
—  more  dutiful  than  Charma, — he  was  hidden  with  clothes, 
and  recalled  to  his  senses ;  and,  having  recovered  his  intel- 
lect, and  perfectly  knowing  what  had  passed,  he  cursed 
Charma,  saying,  "Thou  shalt  be  a  servant  of  servants." 
It  Avould  be  difticult  certainly  to  produce  a  more  curious 
legend,  or  one  more  strikingly  illustrative  of  the  mixture 
of  truth  and  fable  which  must  ever  be  looked  for  in  that 
tradition  which  some  are  content  to  accept  even  in  religion 
as  a  trustworthy  guide.  In  ever  varying  tradition,  as  in 
those  difficult  problems  in  physical  science  which  have  to  be 
■wrought  out  from  a  multitude  of  differing  observations,  it 
is,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  the  mean  result  of  the  Avhole 
that  must  be  accepted  as  approximately  the  true  one.  And 
the  mean  result  of  those  dim  and  distorted  recollections  of 
the  various  tribes  of  men  which  refer  to  the  Flood  is  a 
result  Avhich  bears  simply  to  this  effect,  —  that  in  some 
early  age  of  the  Morld  a  great  deluge  took  place,  in  which 
well  nigh  the  whole  human  family  was  destroyed. 

The  ancient  traditions  which  have  come  down  to  us 
embalmed  in  classic  literature  form  but  a  small  portion  of 
what  seems  once  to  have  existed  in  the  wide  recrion  now 
overspread  by  Christianity  and  Mohammedanism.  A  second 
deluge,  more  iiital  to  at  least  the  productions  of  the  lumian 
mind  than  the  first  had  been,  overspread  the  earth  during 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  291 

what  are  known  as  the  Middle  Ages ;  and  so  signal  was  the 
wreck  which  it  occasioned,  that  of  seven  heathen  Avriters  * 
whose  testimony  regarding  the  Flood  Josephus  cites  as 
corroborative  of  his  own,  not  one  has  descended  in  his 
writings  to  these  later  times.  We  learn,  however,  from 
the  Jewish  historian,  that  one  of  their  number,  Berosus, 
was  a  Chaldean  ;  that  two  of  the  others,  Hieronymns  and 
Manetho,  were  Egyptians;  and  that  a  third,  Nicolaus, 
whose  history  he  qnotes,  was  a  citizen  of  Damascus. 
"  There  is,"  said  this  latter  writer,  in  his  perished  history, 
"  a  great  mountain  in  Armenia,  over  Minyas,  called  Baris, 
upon  which  it  is  reported  that  many  who  fled  at  the  time 
of  the  deluge  were  saved ;  and  that  one  who  was  carried 
in  an  ark  came  on  shore  on  the  top  of  it ;  and  that  the 
remains  of  the  timber  Avere  a  great  while  preserved.  This 
might  be  the  man,"  added  this  forgotten  Avriter,  "about 
whom  Moses,  the  legislator  of  the  Jews,  wrote."  The 
works  of  the  Chaldean,  Berosus,  have  long  since  been  lost, 
all  save  a  few  extracts  preserved  by  the  Patristic  Avriters. 
One  of  these,  however,  which  embodies  the  Chaldean  tra- 
dition of  the  Flood,  is  very  remarkable.  Like  the  Scandi- 
navian legend,  it  represents  the  antediluvians  as  giants,  all 
of  whom,  save  one,  became  exceedingly  impious  and  de- 
praved. "But  there  was  one  among  the  giants,"  says 
Berosus,  "that  reverenced  the  gods,  and  was  more  wise 
and  prudent  than  all  the  rest.  His  name  was  Noa ;  he 
dwelt_in_Syria,  with  his  three  sons,  Sem,  Japet,  Chem,  and 
their  -wix.es^  the  great  Tidea,  Pandora,  Noela,  and  Noegla. 
This  man,  fearing  the  destruction  Avhich,  he  foresaw  from 
the  stars,  would  come  to  pass,  began,  in  the  seventy-eighth 
year  before  the  inundation,  to  build  a  ship  covered  like  an 

*  Berosus,  Hicronymus,   Mnaseas,  Nicolaus,  Manetho,  Mochus,  and 
Hcstaeus. 


292  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

ark.  Seventy-eight  years  from  the  time  he  began  to  build 
this  ship,  the  ocean  of  a  sudden  broke  out,  and  all  the. 
inland  seas  and  the  rivers  and  fountains  bursting  from 
beneath  (attended  by  the  most  violent  rains  from  heaven 
for  many  days),  ovei-flowed  all  the  mountains;  so  that  the 
whole  human  race  was  buried  in  the  waters,  except  Noa 
and  his  family,  who  were  saved  by  means  of  the  ship, 
which,  being  lifted  up  by  the  waters,  rested  at  last  upon 
the  top  of  the  Gendyae  or  Mountain,  on  which,  it  is 
repoiled,  there  now  remaineth  some  part,  and  that  men 
take  away  the  bitumen  from  it,  and  make  use  of  it  by  way 
of  charm  or  expiation,  to  avoid  evil."  A  more  general 
Assyrian  tradition,  somewhat  different  in  its  details,  also 
survives.*  The  god  Chronus,  it  was  said,  appeared  in  a 
vision  to  Xisuthrus^  the  tenth  king  of  Babylon ;  and,  warn- 
ing him  that  on  a  certain  day  there  would  be  a  great  flood 
upon  the  earth,  by  which  mankind  Avould  be  destroyed,  he 
enjoined  liim  to  build  a_yessel,  and  to  bring  into  it  his 
friends  and  relatives,  with  everything  necessary  to  sustain 
life,  and  all  the  various  animals,  birds,  and  quadrupeds. 
In  obedience  to  the  command,  the  king  built  a  vessel  about 
three  quarters  of  a  mile  in  length  and  half  a  mile  in 
breadth,  which  he  loaded  with  stores  and  the  different 
kinds  of  animals ;  and  into  which,  on  the  day  of  the  flood, 
he  himself  entered,  accompanied  by  his  wife  and  children, 
and  all  his  friends.  The  flood  broke  out.  After,  however, 
accomplishing  its  work  of  destruction,  it  abated ;  and  the 
king  sent  out  birds  from  the  vessel,  which,  at  first  finding 
no  food  or  place  of  rest,  returned  to  him  ;  but  which,  when, 
after  the  lapse  of  some  days,  he  sent  them  forth  again, 
came  back  to  him  with  their  feet  tinged  with  mud.  On  a 
third  trial  they  returned  no  more ;    upon  which,  judging 

*  See  Cory's  "  Ancient  Fragments.' 


THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE.  293 

that,  .the  snrfoce  of  the  earth  was  laid  dry,  lie  made  an 
openmg  in  the  vessel,  and,  looking  forth,  found  it  stranded 
on_a  mountain-  of  the  laud  of  Armenia. 

There  seems  to  exist  no  such  definite  outline  of  the 
;ggj]3tian  tradition  referred  to  by  Josephus  as  that  pre- 
served of  the  Chaldean  one.  Plato,  in  his  "  Tima3us," 
makes  the  Egyptian  priest  Avhom  he  introduces  as  dis- 
coursing with  Solon,  to  attribute  that  clear  recollection 
of  a  remote  antiquity  which  survived  in  Egypt,  to  its 
comparative  freedom  from  those  great  floods  which  had 
at  various  times  desolated  Greece,  and  destroyed  the 
memory  of  remote  events  by  the  destruction  of  the  peo- 
ple and  their  records ;  and  Bacon  had  evidently  this 
passage  in  view  when  he  poetically  remarked,  in  his  mag- 
nificent essay  on  the  "  Vicissitude  of  Things,"  that  "  the 
great  winding  sheets  that  bury  all  things  in  oblivion  are 
two,  —  deluges  and  earthquakes ;  from  which  two  destruc- 
tions is  to  be  noted,"  he  adds,  "  that  the  remnant  of  people 
that  happen  to  be  j^reserved  ai-e  commonly  ignorant  and 
mountainous  people,  that  can  give  no  account  of  the  time 
past."  Even  in  Egypt,  however,  the  recollection  of  the 
deluge  seems  to  have  survived,  though  it  lay  entangled 
amid  what  seem  to  be  symbolized  memories  of  unusual 
floodings  of  the  river  Nile.  "  The  Noah  of  Egypt,"  says 
Professor  Hitchcock,  in  his  singularly  ingenious  essay  (His- 
torical and  Geological  Deluges  Compared),  "  appears  to 
have  been  Osiris.  Typhon,  a  personification  of  the  ocean, 
enticed  him  into  an  ark,  which,  being  closed,  he  was  forced 
to  sea;  and  it  was  a  curious  fact,  that  he  embarked  on 
the  seventeenth  day  of  the  month  Athyr,  —  the  very  day, 
most  probably,  when  Noah  entered  the  ark."  The  classi. 
cal  tradition  of  Greece,  as  if  the  events  whence  it  took  its 
rise  had  been  viewed  through  a  multiplying  glass,  appears 
to  have  been  increased  from  one  to  many.  Plutarch 
25* 


294  THE   NOACHIAN   DELUGE. 

enumerates  no  fewer  than  five  great  floods  ;  and  Plato 
makes  his  Egyptian  j^riest  describe  the  Greek  deluges  as 
oft  repeated  and  numerous.  There  was  the  flood  of  Deu» 
calion,  the  flood  of  Ogyges,  and  several  other  floods ;  and 
no  little  time  and  learning  have  been  wasted  in  attempt- 
ing to  fix  their  several  periods.  But,  lying  far  within  the 
mythologic  ages,  —  the  last  of  them  to  Avhich  any  deter- 
mining circumstances  are  attached,  in  the  days  of  that 
Prometheus  who  stole  fire  from  heaven,  and  was  chained 
by  Jupiter  to  Mount  Caucasus,  —  it  appears  greatly  more 
probable  that  the  traditions  respecting  them  should  be 
the  mere  rej^eated  and  re-repeated  echoes  of  one  signal 
event,  than  that  many  wide-spread  and  destructive  floods 
should  have  taken  place  in  the  obscure,  fabulous  ages  of 
Grecian  story,  while  not  one  such  flood  has  happened 
during  its  two  thousand  five  hundred  years  of  authentic 
history.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  conceive  how  such  repeti- 
tions of  the  original  tradition  should  have  taken  place. 
The  traditions  of  the  same  event  preserved  by  tribes  liv- 
insr  in  even  the  same  tract  of  countrv  come  in  course 
of  time  considerably  to  differ  from  each  other  in  their 
adjuncts  and  circumstances ;  those,  for  instance,  of  the 
various  tribes  of  the  Orinoco  do  so ;  and  should  these 
tribes  come  to  be  fused  i;ltimately  into  one  nation,  noth- 
ing seems  more  probable  than  that  their  varying  editions, 
instead  of  being  also  fused  together,  should  remain  dis- 
tinct, as  the  recollections  of  separate  and  independent 
catastrophes.  And  thus  the  several  deluges  of  Grecian 'x 
mythology  may  in  reality  testify,  not  to  the  occurrence  \ 
of  several  floods,  but  to  the  existence  merely  of  several  / 
independent  tribes,  among  whom  the  one  great  ti'adition  ^^ 
has  been  so  altered  and  modified  ere  they  came  to  possess 
a  common  literature,  that  when  at  length  tlicv  became 
skilful  enough  to  place  it  on  record,  it  appeared  to  them 


THE   NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  295 

not  as  one,  but  as  many.  Tlic  admirable  reflection  of 
Humboldt  suggested  by  the  South  American  traditions 
seems,  incidentally  at  least,  to  bear  out  this  view.  "  Those 
ancient  traditions  of  the  human  race,"  he  says,  "\vhi(-h  we 
find  dispersed  over  the  whole  surface  of  the  globe,  like  the 
relics  of  a  vast  shipwreck,  are  highly  interesting  in  the 
philosophical  study  of  our  own  species.  IIow  many  dif- 
ferent tongues  belonging  to  branches  that  appear  totally 
distinct  transmit  to  us  the  same  tacts!  The  traditions, 
concerning  races  that  have  been  destroyed,  and  the  re- 
newal of  nature,  scarcely  vary  in  reality,  though  every 
nation  gives  them  a  local  colorhig.  In  the  great  conti- 
nents, as  iii  the  smallest  islands  of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  it 
is  always  on  the  loftiest  and  nearest  mountain  that  the 
remains  of  the  human  race  have  been  saved ;  and  this 
event  appears  the  more  recent,  in  proportion  as  the  nations 
are  uncultivated,  and  as  the  knowledge  they  have  of  their 
own  existence  has  no  very  remote  date."  And  it  seems  at 
least  not  improbable,  that  the  several  traditions  of  appar- 
ently special  deluges,  —  deluges  each  Avith  its  own  set  of 
circumstances,  and  from  which  the  progenitors  of  one 
nation  were  saved  on  a  hill-top,  those  of  another  on  a 
raft,  and  those  of  yet  another  in  an  ark  or  canoe,  and 
which  in  one  instance  destroyed  only  giants,  and  had  in 
another  the  loss  which  they  occasioned  repaired  by  date- 
stones,  and  in  yet  another  by  stones  of  the  earth, —  should 
come  to  be  regarded  among  a  people  composed  of  various 
tribes,  and  but  little  accustomed  to  sift  the  evidence  on 
which  they  founded,  rather  as  all  diverse  narratives  of 
diverse  events,  than  as  in  reality  but  varied  accounts  of 
one  and  the  same  tremendous  catastrophe.  . 

Taking   it    for   granted,   then,  that   the   several  Greek 
traditions  refer  to  but  one  great  event,  let  us  accept  that 


296  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

which  records  what  is  known  as  the  flood  of  Deucalion, 
as  more  adequately  representative  of  the  general  type  of 
its  class,  especially  in  the  edition  given  by  Lucian  (in  his 
work  "De  Dea  Syria"),  than  any  of  the  others.  ''The 
present  world,"  says  this  writer,  "is  peopled  from  the 
sons  of  Deucalion.  In  respect  to  the  former  brood,  they 
were  men  of  violence,  and  lawless  in  their  dealings  ;  they 
regarded  not  oaths,  nor  observed  the  rites  of  hospitality, 
nor  showed  mercy  to  those  who  sued  for  it.  On  this 
account  they  Avere  doomed  to  destruction  ;  and  for  this 
purpose  there  was  a  mighty  eruption  of  water  from  the 
earth,  attended  with  heavy  showers  from  above,  so  that 
the  rivers  swelled  and  the  sea  overflowed,  till  the  whole 
earth  was  covered  with  a  flood,  and  all  flesh  drowned. 
Deucalion  alone  was  preserved,  to  people  the  world.  This 
mercy  was  shown  him  on  account  of  his  justice  and  j^iety. 
His  preservation  was  eflfected  in  this  manner:  —  He  put 
all  his  family,  both  his  sons  and  their  wives,  into  a  vast 
ark  which  he  had  provided,  and  he  then  went  into  it  him- 
self At  the  same  time,  animals  of  every  species,  —  boarsj 
horses,  lions,  serpents,  —  Avhatever  lived  upon  the  face  of 
the  earth,  —  followed  him  by  pairs ;  all  which  he  received 
into  the  ark,  and  experienced  no  evil  from  them."  Such 
is  the  tradition  of  Deucalion,  as  preserved  by  Lucian.  It 
is  added  by  his  contemporary  Plutarch,  that" "  Deucalion, 
as  his  voyage  was  drawing  to  a  close,  sent  out  a  dove, 
which  coming  in  a  short  time  back  to  him,  indicated  that 
the  Avaters  still  covered  the  earth ;  but  which  on  a  second 
occasion  failed  to  return  ;  or,  as  some  say,  returned  to 
him  with  mud-stained  feet,  and  thus  intimated  the  abate- 
ment of  the  flood."  It  cannot,  I  think,  be  rationally 
doubted  that  Ave  haA'e  in  this  ancient  legend  one  other 
tradition  of  the  Noachian  Deluge.      Even  as  related   by 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  297 

Ovid,  with  all  the  license  of  the  poet,  we  find  in  it  the 
great  leading  traits  that  indicate  its  parentage.  I  quote 
from  the  vigorous  translation  of  Dryden. 

"Impetuous  rain  descends; 
Nor  from  his  patrimonial  heaven  alone 
Is  Jove  content  to  pour  his  vengeance  down; 
But  from  his  l>rotlicr  of  the  seas  he  craves 
To  help  him  with  auxiliary  waves. 
Then  with  his  mace  the  monarch  stnick  the  ground; 
With  inward  trembling  earth  received  the  wound, 
And  rising  streams  a  ready  passage  found. 
Now  seas  and  earth  were  in  confusion  lost, — 
A  world  of  waters,  and  without  a  coast. 
A  mountain  of  tremendous  height  there  stands 
Betwixt  the  Athenian  and  Bceotian  lands: 
Parnassus  is  its  name,  whose  forky  rise 
Mounts  through  the  clouds,  and  mates  the  lofty  skies. 
High  on  the  summit  of  this  dubious  cliff, 
Deucalion,  wafting,  moored  his  little  skiff: 
He,  with  his  wife,  were  only  left  behind 
Of  perished  man;  they  two  were  human  kind: 
The  most  upright  of  mortal  men  was  he, — 
The  most  serene  and  holy  woman  she." 

^  Such  are  some  of  the  traditions  of  that  great  catastrophe 
which  overtook  the  human  fomily  in  its  infancy,  and  made 
so  deep  an  impression  on  the  memories  of  the  few  awe- 

\  struck  survivors,  that  the  race  never  forgot  it.  Ere  the 
dispersal  of  the  family  it  would  have  of  course  existed  as 
but  one  unique  recollection,  —  a  single  reflection  on  the 
face  of  an  unbroken  mirror.  But  the  mirror  has  since 
been  shattered  into  a  thousand  j)ieces  ;  and  Ave  now  find 
the  object,  originally  but  one,  pictured  in  each  broken 
fragment,  with  various  degrees  of  distinctness,  according 
to  the  various  degrees  of  injury  received  by  the  reflecting 
medium.  Picture,  too,  scarce  less  certainly  than  language 
spoken  and  written,  testifies  to   the  Avide   extent  of  the 


298 


THE  NOACHIAN  DELUGE, 


tradition.  Its  symbols  are  found  stamped  on  coins  of  old 
classical  Greece  ;  they  have  been  traced  amid  the  ancient 
hieroglyphics  of  Egypt,  recognized  in  the  sculptured  caves 
of  Hindustan,  and  detected  even  in  the  far  west,  among 
the  picture  writings  of  Mexico.  The  several  glyphic  rep- 
resentatives of  the  tradition  bear,  like  its  various  written 
or  oral  editions,  a  considerable  resemblance  to  each  other. 
Even  in  the  rude  paintings  of  the  oJ_d  Mexican,  the  same 
leading  idea  may  be  traced  as  in  the  classic  sculpture  _q£- 
the  Greek.  On  what  is  known  to  antiquaries  as  the  Apa- 
mjean  medal,  struck  during  the  reign  of  Philip  the  elder, 
we  find  the  familiar  name  of  Noe  inscribed  on  a  floating 

Fig.  109. 


APAM^AN     MEDAL. 


chest  or  ark,  within  which  a  man  and  woman  are  seen 
seated,  and  to  which  a  bird  on  the  wing  is  represented  as 
bearing  a  branch.*     And  in  an  ancient  Mexican  painting, 


*  As  was  common  in  Bible  illustrations  published  in  our  own  countiy  a 
centurj'  and  a  half  ago,  the  old  Greek  artist  has  introduced  into  his  medal 
two  points  of  time.  Two  of  the  figures  represent  Noe  and  his  wife  quit- 
ting the  ark;  while  the  other  two  exhibit  them  as  seated  within  it.  An 
English  print  of  the  death  of  Abel,  now  before  me,  which  dates  a  little 
after  the  times  of  the  Revolution,  shows,  on  the  same  principle,  the  two 
brothers,  represented  by  four  figures,—  two  of  these  quietly  offering  up 
their  respective  sacrifices  in  the  background,  and  the  other  two  grappling 
in  deadly  warfare  in  front. 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE 


299 


(  figured  by  Humboldt,  "  the  man  and  woman  who.  survived 
the  age  of  water"  ai-e  shown  similai-Iy  inclosed  in  a  leaf- 

XjJifted  box,  or  hollow  trunk  of  a  tree ;  while  a  gigantic 
female, — Matalcueje,  the  goddess  of  water,  —  is  seen  pour- 
ing down  her  floods  around  them,  and  upon  an  over- 
whelmed liuman  figure,  representative  apparently  of  the 
victims  of  the  catastrophe.  All  is  classical  in  the  forms 
of  the  one   representation,  and  uncouth  in  those  of  the 

Fig.  110. 


OLD    MEXICAN    PICTUHE. 

{Humboldt.) 


other.  They  bear  the  same  sort  of  artistic  relation  to 
each  other  that  the  rude  Tamanac  tradition  bears,  in  a 
literary  point  of  view,  to  the  well  constructed  story  and 
elegant  verse  of  Ovid ;  but  they  are  charged  apparently 
with  the  same  meaning,  and  shadow  forth  the  same  event. 

The  tradition  of  the  Flood  may,  I  repeat,  be  properly 
regarded  as  universal;  seeing  there  is  scarce  any  consid- 
erable race  of  man  among  Avhich,  in  some  of  its  many 
forms,  it  is  not  to  be  found.  Now,  it  has  been  argued 
by  some  xiif__ the  older  theologians,  with  a  not  very  cogent 
logic,  that  the  universality  of  the  tradition  establishes  the 


300  THE   NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

*/  universality  of  the  Flood,  —  that  where  the  tradition  is  to 
he  founds  the  Flood  must  have  been  ; — an  argument  which 
would  have  force  if  it  could  also  be  sho^Ti  that  each  tribe 
had  had  its  own  Noah,  saved  by  ark,  raft,  or  canoe,  or  on 
some  tall  mountain  summit,   in  the  region   in  which  his 
descendants  continued  to  reside ;  but  of  no  force  whatever 
if  the  Noah  of  the  race  was  but  one,  and  if  the  scene  of 
his  danger  and  deliverance  was  restricted,  as  of  necessity 
it  must  Iwve  been  in  that  case,  to  a  single  locality.     Fur- 
ther, if,   as  we   believe,  there  was  but  one   Noah,  —  if, 
according  to  the  Scriptural  account,  condensed  into  a  sin- 
gle sentence  by  the  Apostle,  only  "  eight  souls"  Avere  saved 
in  the  great  catastrophe  of  the  race,  —  there  could  have 
existed   no   human   testimony  to  determine  whether   the 
exterminating  deluge  that  occasioned  their  destruction  was 
a  universal  deluge,  or  merely  a  partial  one.     It  could  not 
be  known  by  men  shut  up  in  an  ark,  nor  even  though  from 
a  mast  top  they  could  have  swept  the  horizon  with  a  tele- 
scope, whether  the  waters  that  spread  out  on  every  side  of 
,  them,  covering  the  old  familiar  mountains,  and  occupying 
the  entire  i-ange  of  their  vision,  extended  all  around  the 
globe,   or  found  their  limits  some  eight  or  ten   hundred 
miles  away.      The  point  is  one   respecting  Avhich,  as  cer- 
tainly as  respecting  the  creation  of  the  world  itself,  or  of 
the  world's  inhabitants,  there  could  have  existed  no  human 
toitness-bearing :  contemporary  man,  loft  to  the  unassisted 
evidence  of  his  senses,  lyiust  of  necessity  have  been  igno- 
rant of  the  extent  of  the  deluge.     True,  what  man  could 
never  have  known  of  himself,  God  could  have  told  him, 
v^        and  in  many  cases  has  told  him ; :  but  then,  God's  revela- 
tions have  in  most  instances  been  ma<3e  to  eifect  exclusively 
moral  purposes ;  and  we  know  that  those  who  have  perils 
ously  held  that,  along  with  the  moral  facts,  definite  physi- 
cal facts,  geographic,  geologic,  or  astronomical,  had  also 


THE    NOACHIAX    DELUGE.  301 

/"been  imparted,  have  almost  invariably  found  thcmselvcg 
V_iirv'olved  in  monstrous  error.  And  in  this  matter  of  the 
Flood,  though  it  be  a  fact  of  great  moral  significancy  that 
God  in  an  early  period  of  the  human  history  destroyed  the 
whole  race  for  their  Avickedness,  —  all  save  one  just  man 
and  his  family,  —  it  is  not  in  the  least  a  matter  of  moral 
significancy  whether  or  no  the  deluge  by  which  the  judg- 
ment was  efiected  covered  not  only  the  parts  of  the  earth 
occupied  by  man  at  the  time,  but  extended  also  to  Terra 
del  Fuego,  Tahiti,  and  the  Falkland  Islands.  In  fine, 
though  the  question  Avhcther  the  Noachian  deluge  was 
universal,  or  merely  partial,  is  an  interesting  question  in 
physics,  it  is  in  no  higher  degree  a  moral  one  than  those 
questions  which  relate  to  the  right  figure  or  age  of  the 
earth,  or  to  the  true  motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  And 
it  will  be  found  that  the  only  passages  in  Scripture  which 
refer  to  this  strictly  physical  subject,  instead  of  determin- 
ing the  geographic  extent  of  the  Flood,  serve  only  to  raise 
a  question  regarding  their  own  extent  of  meaning. 

It  is  known  to  all  students  of  the  sacred  writings,  that 
there  is  a  numerous  class  of  passages  in  both  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments  in  Avhich,  by  a  sort  of  metonymy  common 
in  the  East,  a  considerable  part  is  spoken  of  as  the  whole, 
though  in  reality  often  greatly  less  than  a  moiety  of  the 
whole.  Of  this  class  are  the  passages  in  Avhich  it  is  said, 
that  on  the  day  of  Pentecost  there  were  Jews  assembled 
at  Jerusalem  '■'■  owt  oH  every  nation  under  heaven;''''  "that 
the  gospel  was  preached  to  every  creature  under  heaven;^'' 
that  tbe  Queen  of  Sheba  came  to'  hear  the  wisdom  of 
Solomon  from  the  '■'- tittermost  parts  of  the  earth;'"'  thaf 
God  put  the  dread  and  fear  of  the  children  of  Israel  upon 
the  nations  that  were  '-'•under  the  whole  heaven ;'>'>  and 
that  '■'■all  countries  came  into  Egypt  to  Joseph  to  buy 
corn."  And  of  course  the  universally  admitted  existence. 
26 


302  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

of  such  a  class  of  passages,  in  which  words  are  not  to  be 
accepted  in  their  rigidly  literal  meanings,  but  with  certain 
great  modifications^  renders  the  task  of  determining  and 
distinguishing  such  passages  from  others  in  which  the 
meaning  is  definite  and  strict,  not  only  legitimate,  but  also 
laudable ;  and  justifies  us  in  inquiring  whether  those  pas- 
sages descriptive  of  the  Flood  or  its  effects,  in  which  it  is 
said  that  the  "  waters  prevailed  exceedingly  on  the  earth," 
so  that  '"'' all  the  high  hills  that  were  under  the  whole 
heavens  were  covered,"  or  that  "  all  flesh  died  that  moved 
upon  the  earth,"  belong  to  their  number  or  no.  There  are 
some  mstances  in  which  the  Scriptures  themselves  reveal 
the  character  and  limit  the  meaning  of  the  metonymic 
jDassages.  They  do  so  with  respect  to  the  passage  already 
quoted  regarding  the  stranger  Jews  assembled  in  Jerusa- 
lem at  the  Pentecostal  feast,  —  "out  of  eveiy  nation  under 
heaven."  For  further  on  we  read  that  these  Jews  had 
come  from  but  the  various  countries  extending  around 
Judea,  as  far  as  Italy  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Persian 
Gulf  on  the  other ;  —  an  area  large,  indeed,  but  scarce 
equal  to  a  one  fiftieth  part  of  the  earth's  surface.  But  there 
is  no  such  explanation  given  to  limit  or  restrict  most  of  the 
other  passages ;  the  modifying  element  must  be  sought  for 
outside  the  sacred  volume,  —  in  ancient  history  or  ancient 
geography.  The  reader  must,  for  instance,  acquaint  him- 
self with  the  progress  of  discovery  in  early  ages,  or  the 
boundaries  of  the  Roman  Empire  under  the  first  Caesars, 
ere  he  can  form  a  probable  conjecture  regarding  the  extent 
of  that  "  all  the  earth  "  which  sought  the  presence  of  Solo- 
mon, or  a  correct  estimate  resjiectmg  the  limits  of  that 
"  all  the  world  "  which  Caesar  Augustus  could  have  taxed. 
And  to  this  last  class,  which  fail  to  explain  themselves,  the 
passages  respecting  the  Flood  evidently  belong.  Like  the 
passages  cited,  and,  with  these,  almost   all   the   texts   of 


J6* 

T  II  E    N  O  A  C  II I  A  N    DELUGE.  303 


Scripture  iu  which  questions  of  physical  science  are  in- 
volved, the  limiting,  modifying,  explaining  facts  and  cir- 
cumstances must  be  sought  for  in  that  outside  region  of 
secular  research,  historic  and  scientific,  from  which  of  late 
years  so  much  valual)le  biblical  illustration  has  been  de- 
rived, and  with  which  it  is  so  imperatively  the  duty  of  the 
Church  to  keep  up  an  acquaintance  at  least  as  close  and 
intimate  as  that  maintained  with  it  by  her  gainsayers  and 
assailants. 

That  the  Noachian  deluge  might  have  l)een  but  partial, 
not  universal,  Avas  held,  let  me  here  remark,  by  distin- 
guished theologians  in  our  own  country,  at  least  as  early  as 
the  seventeenth  century.  It  was  held,  for  instance,  by  the 
learned  biblical  commentator,  old  MatthcAv  Poole,  Avhom  we 
find  saying,  in  his  Synopsis  on  Genesis,  that  "  it  is  not  to 
be  supposed  that  the  entire  globe  of  the  earth  was  covered 
with  water ; "  for  "  where,"  he  adds,  "  was  the  need  of 
overwhelming  those  regions  in  which  there  were  no  human 
beings?"  It  was  held  also  by  that  distinguished  Protes- 
tant churchman  of  the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  Bishop  Stilling- 
fleet,  whom  Principal  Cunningham  of  Edinburgh  well 
describes,  in  his  elaborate  edition  of  the  Bishop's  work, 
"  The  Doctrines  and  Practices  of  the  Church  of  Rome,"  as 
a  divine  of  "great  talents  and  prodigious  learning,"  "I 
cannot  see,"  says  the  Bishop,  in  his  "Origines  Sacra,"  "any 
urgent  necessity  from  the  Scriptures  to  assert  that  the, 
Flood  did  spread  over  all  the  surface  of  the  earth.  That 
all  mankind,  those  in  the  ark  excepted,  were  destroyed  by 
it,  is  most  certain,  according  to  the  Scriptures.  The  Flood 
was  universal  as  to  mankind ;  but  from  thence  follows  no 
necessity  at  all  of  asserting  the  universality  of  it  as  to  the 
globe  of  the  earth,  unless  it  be  sufficiently  proved  that  the 
whole  earth  was  peopled  before  the  Flood,  Avhich  I  despair 
of  ever  seeing  proved."     It  was  not,  however,  until  the 


304  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

comparatively  recent  times  in  Avliich  the  belief  entertained 
by  Poole  and  Stillingfleet  was  adopted  and  entbrced  by 
writers  sncli  as  Dr.  Pye  Smith,  and  Professor  Hitchcock 
of  the  United  States,  that  there  was  any  show  of  argument 
displayed  against  the  theory  of  a  partial  deluge  which 
would  now  be  deemed  ■worthy  of  consideration.  And 
these  modern  objections  may  be  found  ingeniously  arrayed 
by  the  late  Dr.  John  Kitto,  in  his  "Daily  Bible  Illus- 
trations," published  only  six  years  ago  (in  1850),  and  by 
the  learned  Dr.  William  Hamilton  of  Mobile,  in  his  "Friend 
of  Moses,"  published  in  1852.  Both  these  Avriters,  how- 
ever, virtually  agree  with  their  opponents  hi  holding  that 
the  strict  meaning  of  the  terms  employed  by  Moses  in 
describing  the  deluge  is  to  be  determined  on  consid- 
erations apart  from  the  mere  philological  ones.  After 
marshalling  his  objections  to  the  theory  of  a  local  flood. 
Dr.  Kitto  goes  on  to  say,  "We  yield  our  judgment  to 
what  appears  to  us  the  force  of  these  arguments  as  to  the 
meaning  of  Scripture;"  and  we  find  Dr.  Hamilton  pre- 
facing his  objections  as  follows:  —  "Were  the  mere  uni- 
versality of  some  of  the  terms  employed  in  the  Mosaic 
narrative  the  sole  ground  of  objection  to  the  hypothesis  of 
a  local  inundation  only  in  the  days  of  Noah,  that  hypothe- 
sis might  perhaps  be  deemed  admissible.  But  there  are," 
he  adds,  "  other  and  more  serious  difficulties  attending  it." 
Let  us,  then,  briefly  examine  these  supposed  difficulties  and 
objections ;  and  as  they  have  been  better  and  more  amply 
stated  by  Dr.  Kitto  than  by  any  other  writer  with  whom  I 
am  acquainted, — for  Dr.  Hamilton  takes  up  rather  the 
arguments  in  fa^-or  of  a  universal,  than  the  objections 
against  a  merely  partial  flood,  —  let  us  take  them  as  they 
occur  in  his  writings,  especially  in  the  excellent  Avork  now 
before  me,  —  his  "Daily  Bible  Illustrations."  It  Avill  scarce 
be  suspected  that  such  an  accomplished  writer,  who  did  so 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE  305 

much  for  Biblical  Illustration,  and  whose  admirable  Pic- 
torial Bible  formed,  with  but  foiu-  works  more,  what 
Chalmers  used  to  term  %\ath  peculiar  emphasis  his  "  Biblical 
Library,"*  would  do  injustice  to  any  cause,  or  any  line  of 
argument  which  he  adopted,  if  it  was  in  reality  a  good  and 
sound  one. 

It  may  be  well,  however,  not  to  test  too  rigidly  the 
value  of  the  remark,  —  meant  to  be  at  least  of  the  nature 
of  argument,  —  when  we  find  him  saying  that  "a  plain 
man  sitting  down  to  read  the  Scripture  account  of  the 
deluge  would  have  no  doubt  of  its  universality."  Perhaps 
not.  But  it  is  at  least  equally  certain,  that  plain  men  who 
set  themselves  to  deduce  from  Scripture  the  figure  of  the 
planet  we  inhabit  had  as  little  doubt,  until  corrected  by  the 
geographer,  that  the  earth  was  a  great -plane,  —  not  a 
sphere ;  that  plain  men  who  set  themselves  to  acquire  from 
Scripture  some  notion  of  the  planetary  motions  had  no 
doubt,  in  the  same  Avay,  until  corrected  by  the  astronomei', 
that  it  was  the  earth  that  rested,  and  the  sun  that  moved 
round  it ;  and  that  plain  men  who  have  sought  to  deter- 
mine from  Scripture  the  age  of  the  earth  have  had  no 
doubt,  until  corrected  by  the  geologist,  that  it  was  at  most 
not  much  more  than  six  thousand  years  old.  In  fine,  when 
plain  men,  who,  accordmg  to  Cowper,  "know,  and  know 
no  more,  their  Bible  true,"  have  in  perhaps  every  instance 
learned  from  it  what  it  was  in  reality  intended  to  teach,  — 

*"In  preparing  the 'Horse  Biblicae  Quotidianae,' he  [Dr.  Chalmcrsf 
had  beside  him,  for  use  and  reference,  the  Concordance,  the  Pictorial 
Bible,  Poole's  Sjnopsis,  Henry's  Commentary,  and  Robertson's  Researches 
in  Palestine.  These  constituted  what  lie  called  his  Biblical  Library. 
'There,'  said  he  to  a  friend,  pointing,  as  he  spoke,  to  the  above  named 
volumes  as  they  lay  together  on  his  library  ta])le,  with  a  volume  of  the 
'Quotidianaa,'  in  which  he  had  just  been  writing,  lying  open  beside  them, 
— '  these  are  the  books  I  use :  all  that  is  Biblical  is  there.' "  —Dr.  Hanna's 
Preface  to  "Daily  Scripture  Meadinas." 
26* 


306         THE  NOACHIAN  DELUGE. 

the  way  of  salvation,  — it  seems  scarce  less  certain,  that  in 
every  instance  in  which  they  have  sought  to  deduce  from 
it  what  it  was  not  intended  to  teach,  —  the  truths  of  physi- 
cal science,  —  they  have  fallen  into  extravagant  error. 
And  as  any  question  which,  bearing,  not  on  the  punitory 
extent  and  ethical  consequences  of  the  Flood,  but  merely 
on  its  geographic  limits  and  natural  effects,  is  not  a  moral, 
but  a  purely  physical  question,  it  would  be  but  a  fair  pre- 
sumption, founded  on  the  almost  invariable  experience  of 
ages,  that  the  deductions  from  Scripture  of  the  "plain 
men  "  regarding  it  would  be,  not  true,  but  false  deductions. 
Of  apparently  not  more  real  weight  and  importance  is  the 
doctor's  further  remark,  that  there  seems,  after  all,  to  be  a 
marked  diiference  between  the  terms  in  which  the  univer- 
sality of  the  deluge  is  spoken  of,  and  the  terms  employed 
in  those  admittedly  metonymic  passages  in  which  the  whole 
is  substituted  for  a  part.  "What  limitation,"  he  asks, 
"can  we  assign  to  such  a  phrase  as  this:  —  'all  the  high 
hills  that  were  ujtdek  the  whole  heavens  were  covered  ? ' 
If  here  the  phrase  had  been,  '  upon  the  face  of  the  whole 
earth,'  we  should  have  been  told  that  'the  whole  earth' 
had  sometimes  the  meaning  of  'the  whole  land;'  but,  as 
if  designedly  to  obviate  such  a  limitation  of  meaning,  we 
liave  here  the  largest  phrase  of  universality  which  the 
language  of  man  aifords,  —  'under  the  whole  heavens!'" 
So  far  Dr,  Kitto.  But  his  argument  seems  to  be  not  more 
valuable  in  this  case  than  in  the  other.  It  was  upon  the 
nations  that  Avere  "under  the  whole  heavens"  that 
Deity  represented  himself  as  putting  the  fear  and  dread  of 
the  children  of  Israel ;  but  he  would  be  certainly  a  very 
"plain  man"  who  would  infer  from  the  universality  of  a 
passage  so  evidently  metonymic,  that  that  fear  extended  to 
the  people  of  Japan  on  the  one  hand,  or  to  the  Red  Indians 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains  on  the  other.    The  phrase  "  under 


THE    NOACHIAN  DELUGE.  307 

the  tchole  heavens''^  seems  to  be  but  coextensive  in  mean- 
ing Avitli  the  i)Iirase  "npon  the  face  of  the  Avhole  earth." 
The  "whole  earth"  is  evidently  tantamount  to  the  whole 
terrestrial  floor,  —  the  "whole  hea^-ens,"  to  the  whole 
celestial  roof  that  arches  over  it ;  and  on  what  principle 
the  whole  terrestrial  floor  is  to  be  deemed  less  extensive 
than  the  floor  under  the  Avhole  celestial  roof,  really  does 
not  appear.  Further,  nothing  can  be  more  certain  than 
that  both  the  phrases  contrasted  by  Dr.  Kitto  are  equally 
employed  in  the  metonymic  form. 

When,  however,  the  doctor  passes  to  argument  based 
npon  natural  science,  Ave  find  Avhat  he  adduces  worthy  of 
our  attention,  were  it  but  for  the  inquiries  'which  it  sug- 
gests. "If  the  deluge  were  but  local,"  we  find  him  saying,  ^ 
"  what  was  the  need  of  taking  birds  into  the  ark ;  and,/^ 
among  them  birds  so  Avidely  difl*used  as  the  raven  and  the 
dove  ?  A  deluge  Avhich  could  overspread  the  region  "svhich 
these  birds  inhabit  could  hardly  have  been  less  than  uni- 
versal. If  the  deluge  were  local,  and  all  the  birds  of  these 
kinds  in  that  district  perished,  —  though  we  should  think 
they  might  have  fled  to  the  uninundated  regions,  —  it 
would  have  been  useless  to  encumber  the  ark  with  them, 
seeing  that  the  birds  of  the  same  species  which  survived 
in  the  lands  not  overflowed  would  speedily  replenish  the 
inundated  tract  as  soon  as  the  waters  subsided."  It  will 
be  found  that  the  reasoning  here  is  mainly  based  upon  an 
error  in  natural  science,  into  which  even  naturalists  of  the 
last  century,  such  as  Buftbn,  not  unfrequently  fell,  and 
which  Avas  almost  imiA'ersal  among  the  earlier  voyagers 
and  tra\'ellers,  —  the  error  of  confoundhig  as  identical  the 
merely  allied  birds  and  beasts  of  distant  countries,  and  of 
thus  assigning  to  sjyecies  Avide  areas  in  creation  Avhich  in 
reality  they  do  not  occupy.  The  grouse,  fin-  instance,  is  a 
widely  spread  genus,  or  rather  fatnily ;  for  it  consists  of 


308  THE    NOACniAN    DELUGE. 

more  genera  than  one.  It  is  so  extensively  present  over 
tlie  northern  hemisphere,  that  Siberia,  Norway,  Iceland, 
and  North  America,  have  all  their  grouse,  —  the  latter 
continent,  indeed,  from  five  to  eight  different  kinds ;  and 
yet  so  restricted  are  some  of  the  species  of  which  they 
consist,  that,  Avere  the  British  islands  to  be  submerged,  one 
of  the  best  known  of  the  family,  —  the  red  grouse,  or  moor- 
fowl  {Lagopus  Scotincs),  —  would  disappear  from  creation. 
This  bird,  which,  rated  at  its  money  value,  is  one  of  the 
most  important  in  Europe,  —  for  the  barren  moors  which 
it  frequents  in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland  alone  are  let 
every  season  almost  entirely  for  its  sake  for  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  pounds,  —  is  exclusively  a  British  bird ;  and, 
unless  by  miracle  a  neAV  migratory  instinct  were  given  to 
It,  a  complete  submersion  of  tlie  British  islands  would 
secui'e  its  destruction.  If  the  submerrjence  amounted  to 
but  a  few  hundred  miles  in  lateral  extent,  the  moor-towl 
would  to  a  certainty  not  seek  the  distant  uninundated  land. 
Nor  is  it  at  all  to  be  inferred,  that  in  a  merely  local  but 
wide  spread  deluge,  birds  occupying  a  more  extensive  area 
than  that  overspread  by  the  Flood  would,  according  to 
Dr.  Kitto,  "speedily  replenish  the  inundated  tract  as  soon 
as  the  waters  had  subsided."  The  statement  must  have 
been  hazarded  in  ignorance  of  the  peculiar  habits  of  many 
of  the  non-migratory  birds.  Up  till  about  the  middle  of 
the  last  century,  the  capercailzie,  or  great  cock  of  the 
woods,  was  a  native  of  Scotland,  It  was  exterminated, 
however,  about  the  time  of  the  last  Rebellion,  or  not  long 
after :  the  last  specimen  seen  among  the  pine  forests  of 
Strathspey  was  killed,  it  is  said,  in  the  year  1745 :  the  last 
specimen  seen  among  the  woods  of  Strathglass  survived  till 
the  year  1760.  Pennant  relates  that  he  saw  in  1769  a 
specimen,  probably  a  stuffed  one,  that  had  been  killed 
shortly  before  in  the  neigliborhood  of  Inverness.     But  from 


THE   NOACHIAN   DELUGE.  30'J 

at  least  that  time  the  species  disappeared  from  the  British 
islands ;  and,  though  it  continued  to  exist  in  Norway,  did 
not  "replenish  the  tracts  from  which  it  had  been  extirpated," 
The  late  Marquis  of  Breadalbanc  was  at  no  small  cost  and 
trouble  in  re-introducing  the  species,  and  to  some  extent 
he  succeeded ;  but  the  capercailzie  is,  I  understand,  still 
restricted  to  the  Breadalbane  woods.  I  have  seen  the 
golden  eagle  annihilated  as  a  species  in  more  than  one 
district  of  the  north  of  Scotland ;  nor,  though  it  still  exists 
in  other  parts  of  the  kingdom,  and  is  comparatively  com- 
mon among  the  mountains  of  Norway,  have  I  known  it  in 
any  instance  to  sprea^.  anew  over  the  tracts  from  which  it 
had  been  extirpated.  So  much  for  the  general  reasonings 
of  Dr.  Kitto,  Further,  we  find  him  stating,  that  a  deluge 
Avhich  could  overspread  the  region  inhabited  by  birds  so 
widely  diffused  as  the  raven  and  the  dove,  could  hardly 
have  been  less  than  universal.  The  doctor,  however,  ought 
to  have  known  that  the  dove  is  a  family,  not  a  species.  All 
the  Ameiican  species  of  doves,  for  example,  differ  from  the 
six  European  species,  three  of  which  are  to  be  found  in  Scot- 
land. Of  even  the  American  passenger  pigeons  {J^ctopistes 
migratoria),  which  occur  in  such  numbers  in  their  native 
country  as  actually  to  eclipse,  during  their  migratory  flights, 
the  light  of  day,  only  a  single  straggler,  —  the  one  whose 
chance  visit  has  been  recorded  by  Dr.  Fleming,  —  seems  to 
have  been  ever  seen  in  Britain.  And  the  East  has  also  its 
own  peculiar  species,  unknown  to  Europe.  The  golden- 
green  pigeons  and  the  great  crowned  pigeons  of  the  Indian 
isles  are  never  seen  in  northern  and  western  latitudes,  save 
in  stuffed  specimens  in  a  museum.  The  Vinago  pigeons, 
with  their  vividly  bright  plumes,  though  they  exist  in 
several  species,  are  all  restricted  to  the  woods  of  the  torrid 
zone.  Even  the  collared  dove  of  Africa  and  the  Lev-int 
rarely  visits,  and  then  only  as  a  straggler,  the  western 


310  THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE. 

and  northern  parts  of  Europe.  The  hhie-capped  tnrteline 
pigeon  is  restricted,  as  a  species,  to  the  island  of  Celebes ; 
the  blue  and  green  turteline  pigeon  is  a  native  of  New 
Guinea ;  the  Cape  turtle  occurs  in  but  the  southern  parts 
of  Africa;  the  Nicobar  ground  pigeon  in  but  the  Indian 
Archipelago ;  the  magnificent  fruit  pigeon  in  the  eastern 
parts  of  Australia;  and  the  crowned  goura  pigeon,  the 
giant  of  its  family,  in  the  Molucca  Islands.  No  single 
species  of  dove  seems  to  be  so  widely  spread  but  that  it 
might  be  exterminated  in  a  merely  partial  deluge ;  and  of 
course  conjecture  may  in  vain  weary  itself  in  striving  to 
determine  what  that  particular  species  Avas  which  Noah 
sent  forth  as  a  messenger  from  the  ark,  or  in  inquiring 
what  was  the  extent  of  the  area  which  it  occupied?  The 
common  raven  is  more  Avidely  spread  than  any  single 
species  of  pigeon.  Even  the  raven,  however,  seems  re- 
stricted to  the  northern  hemisphere.  India  and  Southern 
Africa  have  both  their  ravens ;  but  the  species  diifer  from 
each  other,  and  from  the  widely  spread  northern  one.  It 
is  a  question  Avh ether  even  the  pied  raven  of  the  Faroe 
Isles  be  not  a  distinct  bird  from  the  black  raven  of  our  own 
country :  if  not  an  independent  species,  it  is  at  least  a  A-ery 
remarkable  A^ariety.  Further,  Avhen  extirpated  in  a  dis- 
trict, it  is  found  that,  as  in  the  case  of  the  capercailzie  and 
the  £;olden  ea2;le,  the  neisrhborinsj  reijions  in  Avliich  the 
raven  continues  to  exist  fail  for  ages  to  furnish  a  fresh 
supply.  There  are  counties  in  England  in  which  the  raven 
is  now  never  seen ;  and  I  am  acquainted  Avith  a  district  in 
the  north  of  Scotland  from  Avhich,  Avhen  a  pair  that  Avere 
knoAvn  to  breed  for  more  than  a  century  in  a  tall  cliff  Avere 
destroyed  by  the  foAvler,  the  species  disappeared.*     Such. 

*  The  raven  is  said  to  live  for  more  than  a  hundred  years.     I  am,  how- 
ever, not  prepared  to  say  that  it  was  the  same  pair  of  birds  that  used 


THE    NO  AC  II  IAN    DELUGE.  3H 

when  examined,  are  the  arguments  drawn  liy  Dr.  Kitto 
from  natural  science ;  nor  is  he  in  any  degree  happier  when 
he  resorts  to  arguments  more  restrictedly  physical.  "  If," 
we  find  him  saying,  "  the  waters  of  the  Deluge  rose  fifteen 
cubits  above  all  the  mountains  of  the  countries  Avhich  the 
raven  and  the  dove  inhabit,  the  level  must  have  been  high 
enough  to  give  universality  to  the  Deluge.''''  The  only  point 
here  not  already  dealt  with,  —  for  I  have  just  shown  that 
certain  species  of  the  dove  and  the  raven  might  liave  of 
necessity  been  inmates  of  the  ark,  though  the  Flood  had 
been  only  a  partial  one,  —  is  that  which  refers  to  the  sub- 
mergence of  the  hills  over  at  least  an  extensive  tract,  and 
to  the  inference,  evident  in  the  passage,  that  if  lofty  moun- 
tains were  covered  in  one  portion  of  the  globe,  mountains 
of  similar  altitude  must  have  been  equally  covered  in  every 
other  portion  of  it. 

The  inference  here  seems  to  be  founded  on  a  common 
but  altogether  mistaken  view  of  some  of  the  grandest  opera- 
tions of  nature  with  which  modern  science  has  brought  us 
acquainted.  It  has  been  well  remarked,  that  Avhen  two 
opposing  explanations  of  extraordinary  natural  phenomena 
are  given,  —  one  of  a  simple  and  seemingly  common  sense 
character,  the  other  complex  and  apparently  absurd,  —  it 
is  almost  always  safer  to  adopt  the  apparently  absurd  than 
the  seemingly  common  sense  one.  Dr.  Kitto's  "plain  man," 
yielding  to  the  dictates  of  what  he  would  deem  common 
sense,  —  which,  of  course,  in  qiiestions  of  natural  science  is 
tantamoimt  to  common  nonsense,  —  would  be  sure  to  go 
wrong.  And  we  find  the  remark  not  inaptly  illustrated  by 
the  now  well  established  fact,  that  while  the  medium  level 
of  the  ocean  is  one  of  the  most  fixed  lines  in  nature,  the 

year  after  year,  to  build  on  the  same  rock-sliclf  among  tlic  precipices  of 
Navity,  from  the  times  of  my  great-grandfaihcr's  boyhood  to  those  of 
my  own. 


312  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

level  of  the  great  continents,  with  their  table-lands  and 
mountains,  is  an  ever  fluctuating  line.  It  may  seem  strange 
that  land  should  be  less  stable  than  water.  We  see  the 
tide  rising  and  falling  twice  every  twenty-four  hours,  and 
the  rock  ever  remaining  in  its  place;  —  we  speak  of  the 
fixed  earth  and  the  unstable  sea.  And  yet,  while  we  have 
no  evidence  whatever  that  the  sea  level  has  changed  during 
at  least  the  ages  of  the  Tertiary  formations,  and  absolutely 
know  that  it  could  not  have  A-aried  more  than  a  few  yards, 
or  at  most  a  few  fathoms,  we  have  direct  evidence  that 
during  that  time  great  mountain  chains,  many  thousand 
feet  in  height,  such  as  the  Alps,  have  arisen  from  the 
bottom  of  the  ocean,  and  that  great  continents  have  sunk 
beneath  it  and  disappeared.  The  larger  part  of  northern 
Europe  and  America  have  been  covered  by  the  sea  since 
our  present  group  of  shells  began  to  exist ;  and  it  seems 
not  improbable  that  the  lower  portion  of  the  valley  of  the 
Jordan  was  depressed  to  its  present  low  level  of  thirteen 
hundred  feet  beneath  the  Mediterranean  since  the  times  of 
the  deluge.  On  several  parts  of  the  coasts  of  Britain  and 
Ireland  the  voyager  can  look  down  through  the  clear  sea, 
in  depths  to  which  the  tide  never  falls,  on  the  remains  of 
submerged  forests ;  and  it  is  a  demonstrable  fact,  that  even 
during  the  present  age -there  are  certain  extensive  tracts 
of  land  which  have  sunk  beneath  the  sea  level,  while  certain 
other  extensive  tracts  have  been  elevated  over  it.  In  1819, 
a  wide  expanse  of  country  in  the  delta  of  the  Indus,  con- 
taining fully  two  thousand  square  miles  of  flat  meadow, 
t\'as  converted  by  a  sudden  depression  of  the  land,  accom- 
panied by  an  earthquake,  into  an  inland  sea ;  and  the  tower 
of  a  small  fort,  which  occupied  nearly  the  middle  of  the 
sunken  area,  and  on  which  many  of  the  inhabitants  of  a 
neighboring  village  succeeded  in  saving  themselves,  may 
Btill  be  seen  raising  its  shattered  head  over  the  surface,  — 


THE   NOACHIAN   DELUGE.  313 

the  only  object  visible  in  a  waste  of  waters  of  which  the 
eye  fails  to  determine  the  extent.  About  three  years  after 
this  event,  a  tract  of  country",  interposed  between  the  foot 
of  the  Andes  and  the  Pacific,  more  than  equal  in  area  to  all 
Great  Britain,  was  elevated  from  two  to  seven  feet  over 
its  former  level,  and  rocks  laid  bare  in  the  sea,  which  the 
pilots  and  fishermen  of  the  coast  had  never  before  seen. 
On  the  Indian  coast  the  sea  seemed  to  be  rising  at  nearly 
the  same  time  wOien  it  appeared  to  be  falling  on  the  Ameri- 
can one ;  and  on  the  latter  such  was  the  actual  impression 
entertained  by  the  people.  It  is  stated  by  Sir  Charles 
Lyell,  in  his  "Elements,"  that  he  was  informed  l)y  Mr. 
Cruickshanks,  an  English  botanist  Avho  resided  in  Chili  at 
the  time,  "  that  it  was  the  general  belief  of  the  fishermen 
and  inhabitants,  not  that  the  land  had  risen,  but  that  the 
ocean  had  permanently  retreated,"  But  if  it  had  retreated 
from  the  Chilian  shore,  how  could  it  have  risen  on  the 
Indian  one  ?  In  like  manner  the  sea  appears  to  be  receding 
from  the  north-eastern  shores  of  Sweden  at  the  rate  of 
nearly  four  vertical  feet  in  the  century;  while  it  seems 
to  be  advancing  on  the  western  coasts  of  Greenland  at 
appai-ently  a  rate  more  considerable,  though  there  the  ratio 
of  its  rise  has  not  been  marked  with  equal  care.  It  seems 
to  be  rising  on  even  the  Swedish  province  of  Scania ;  while 
all  the  time,  however,  the  actual  motion,  —  upwards  in  one 
region,  downwards  in  another,  —  is  in  the  solid  earth, — 
not  in  the  unstable  water,  which  merely  serves  as  a  sort 
of  hydrostatic  levels  to  indicate  this  fact  of  subsidence  or 
elevation  in  the  land.  And  of  course  all  the  reasoning, 
founded  on  mere  appearances,  that  would  reverse  the  pro- 
cess by  assigning  permanency  to  the  level  of  the  land, 
and  fluctuation  to  that  of  the  sea,  would  lead  to  inevitable 
error. 

Let  us,  for  the  illustration's  sake,  suppose  that  the  British 
27 


314  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

islands  had  been  the  scene  of  the  Dekige ;  and  that  it  had 
been  occasioned  by  a  gradual  depression  in  the  earth's 
surface  of  about  fifteen  hundred  miles  in  length,  a  thousand 
miles  in  breadth,  five  thousand  feet  in  depth  in  its  centre, 
and  Avhich  gradually  trended  all  around  towards  the  sides. 
Such  a  depression  Avould  form  a  scarce  appreciable  inequality 
on  the  surface  of  even  a  three  feet  globe ;  in  a  twelve  inch 
globe  it  might  be  represented  by  the  abrasion  of  a  small 
patch  of  the  varnish ;  nor  -would  it  have  in  nature  one  sixth 
the  depth,  or  one  sixteenth  the  area,  of  the  bed  of  the 
Atlantic  Ocean.  Let  us  suppose  further,  that  it  had  been 
produced  by  an  equable  sinking  of  the  surface,  prolonged 
for  forty  days  at  the  rate  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
feet  per  day,  —  a  motion  not  equal  to  that  of  the  minute- 
hand  of  a  clock  whose  dial  plate  measures  two  feet  in 
diameter.  Further,  let  us  suppose  that  a  thoroughly  intel- 
ligent man,  —  let  us  say  Dr.  Kitto  himself,  —  secure  from 
all  personal  danger  in  an  ark  perched  on  some  such  com- 
mandinor  eminence  as  Arthur's  Seat,  had  been  a  witness  of 
the  catastrophe;  and  that,  instead  of  having  merely  to 
reason  respecting  it  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  four 
thousand  years,  he  had  been  enabled  to  bear  testimony 
regarding  it  from  the  evidence  of  his  senses.  In  the  first 
place,  let  me  remark  that  the  sinking  or  downw-ard  motion 
of  the  earth's  crust  would  be  altogether  inappreciable  by 
sense ;  in  the  next,  that  the  depression,  even  when  it  had 
reached  its  acme,  would  in  no  sensible  degree  affect  the 
contour  of  surrounding  objects.  Even  at  the  end  of  the 
forty  days,  Avhen  the  five  thousand  feet  of  depression  had 
been  reached,  the  gradient  of  declination  across  the  sunken 
area  would  not  exceed  ten  feet  per  mile,  and  across  the 
larger  diameter  would  amount  to  but  six  feet  eight  inches 
per  mile.  Of  course,  at  the  end  of  the  twentieth  day  the 
gradients  would  be  represented  by  but  one  half  these  sums, 


THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE.  315 

and  would  be  altogetlier  inappreciable  in  the  landscape ; 
the  hills  would  seem  quite  as  high  as  before,  and  the  valleys 
not  more  profound.  The  only  sensible  sign  felt  or  visible 
of  what  was  taking  place  Avould  be  simply  a  persistent 
rising  of  the  sea  at  somewhat  less  than  twice  its  rate  of 
flow  during  stream  tides.  Ocean,  as  if  forgetful  of  its 
ancient  bounds,  would  continue  to  encroach  upon  the  land. 
On  the  second  day  the  greater  part  of  what  is  now  the  site 
of  Edinburgh  would  be  covered ;  on  the  seA'enth  day  the 
tide  would  have  reached  the  vessel  perched  on  the  top  of 
the  hill  now  known  as  Arthur's  Seat ;  on  the  sixteenth  day 
the  highest  peak  of  the  Pentlands  would  have  disappeared ; 
and  in  nine  days  more  the  distant  summit  of  Ben  Lomond. 
From  the  roof  of  the  slowly  drifting  ark  nothing  would 
then  have  appeared  save  a  shoreless  ocean.  But  it  would 
have  taken  yet  other  eleven  days  ere  the  proud  crest  of 
Ben  Nevis,  the  highest  land  in  the  British  islands,  would 
have  been  submerged ;  and  the  eve  of  the  fortieth  day 
would  have  seen  it  covered  by  little  more  than  five  hundred 
feet  of  water.  An  actual  witness,  in  such  circumstances, 
however  intelligent,  could  have  but  testified  to  the  ])er- 
sistent  rise  of  the  sea,  accompanied  mayhap  by  rain  and 
tempest ;  he  could  but  tell  how  that  for  many  days  together 
it  had  been  flood  without  ebb,  as  if  the  fountains  of  the 
great  deep  had  been  broken  iip ;  and  that  at  length  ho  was 
encompassed  by  Avhat  seemed  a  shoreless  ocean.  But  he 
would  certainly  depart  perilously  from  his  position  as  a 
witness-bearer,  were  he  to  argue,  that  Avhen  his  ark  had 
begun  to  float  on  a  hill  eight  hundred  feet  in  height,  all 
hills  upon  the  surface  of  the  globe  of  a  corresponding  alti- 
tude must  have  been  also  covered ;  or  that,  from  what  was 
in  reality  but  a  local  depression,  a  xmiversal  deluge  might 
be  legitimately  inferred.  His  error  would  be  of  the  same 
nature  (though  of  course  immensely  greater)  as  that  of  the 


316  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

native  of  Chili  who  held,  that  because  the  ocean  had 
retreated  from  the  coasts  of  his  own  country,  it  had  of 
necessity  also  retreated  from  the  delta  of  the  Indus ;  or  as 
that  of  the  inhabitant  of  Cutch  who  held,  that  as  the  sea 
had  risen  high  over  his  native  districts,  it  had  also  of  neces- 
sity overflowed  the  coasts  of  Chili  and  Aracan. 

Dr.  Kitto  brings  forward  but  one  other  objection  to  a 
Flood  only  partial,  and  that  the  one  virtually  disposed  of 
by  Bishop  Stillingfleet  in  the  terminal  half  of  a  short  sen- 
tence. The  Bishop  "despaired,"  as  he  well  might,  "of 
ever  seeing  it  pi-oved  that  the  whole  earth  had  been  peo- 
pled before  the  Deluge."  "It  has  been  much  urged  of 
late,"  says  Dr.  Kitto,  "  that  the  Deluge  was  not  universal, 
but  was  confined  to  a  particular  region,  which  man  inhab- 
ited. It  may  be  freely  admitted  that,  seeing  the  object  of 
the  Flood  was  to  dro^vn  mankind,  there  was  no  need  that 
it  should  extend  beyond  the  region  of  man's  habitation. 
But  this  theory  necessarily  assigns  to  the  world  before  the 
Flood  a  lower  population,  and  a  more  limited  extension  of 
it,  than  we  are  prepared  to  concede."  He  then  goes  on  to 
argue,  that,  as  the  species  increased  v^ery  rapidly  inmiedi- 
ately  after  the  Deluge,  it  must  have  increased  in  a  ratio  at 
least  equally  rapid  before  that  catastrophe  took  place.  But 
how  gratuitous  the  assumption!  It  would  be  quite  as 
safe  to  infer,  that  as  the  human  race  multiplied  greatly  in 
Ireland  during  the  first  half  of  the  present  century,  it 
must  have  also  multiplied  greatly  in  Italy,  a  much  finer 
country,  during  the  first  half  of  the  fifth  century,  or 
in  the  wealthier  portions  of  Kurdistan  during  the  first 
half  of  the  thirteenth.  Ere  applying,  however,  the  Irish 
ratio  of  increase  to  either  the  Italy  of  thirteen  hundred 
years  ago,  or  to  the  Kurdistan  of  five  hundred  years  ago, 
it  would  surely  be  necessary  to  take  into  account  the  im- 
portant fact,  that  these  were  the  ages  of  Zingis  Khan  and 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  oil 

of  Attila ;  of  Zingis  Khan,  wlio,  on  possessing  himself  of 
the  three  capitals  of  the  one  country,  coolly  butchered  four 
millions  three  hundred  and  forty-seven  tliousand  persons, 
their  inhabitants ;  and  of  that  Attila,  "  tlie  scourge  of 
God,"  who  used  to  say,  more  especially  in  reference  to  the 
other  country,  that  "  wherever  his  horse-hoofs  had  once 
trod,  the  gi'ass  never  afterwards  grew,"  and  before  whose 
ravages  the  human  race  seemed  melting  away.  The  terms 
in  which  the  great  wickedness  of  the  antediluvians  is  de- 
scribed indicate  a  period  of  violence  and  outrage;  —  the 
age  which  preceded  the  Flood  was  an  age  of  "  giants"  and 
of  "  mighty  men,"  and  of  "  men  of  renown,"  —  forgotten 
Attilas,  Alarics,  and  Zingis  Khans,  mayhap,  —  "  giants  of 
mighty  bone  and  bold  emprise,"  who  became  famous  for 
their  "infinite  manslaughter,"  and  the  thousands  whom 
they  destroyed.  Such  is  decidedly  the  view  which  the 
brief  Scriptural  description  suggested  to  the  poets;  and 
certainly,  when  a  question  comes  to  be  one  of  guess  work, 
no  other  class  of  persons  guess  half  so  sagaciously  as  they. 
It  has  not  unfrequently  occurred  to  me,  —  and  in  a  ques- 
tion of  this  kind  one  suggestion  may  be  quite  as  admissible 
as  another,  —  that  the  Deluge  may  have  been  more  a  visi- 
tation of  mercy  to  the  race  than  of  judgment.  Even  in 
our  own  times,  as  happened  in  New  Zealand  during  the 
present  century,  and  in  Tahiti  about  the  close  of  the  last, 
tribes  restricted  to  one  tract  of  country,  w'hen  seized  by 
the  madness  of  conquest,  have  narrowly  escaped  extermi- 
nation. We  know  that  in  some  instances  better  have  been 
destroyed  by  worse  races,  —  that  the  more  refined  have  at 
times  yielded  to  the  more  barbarous,  —  yielded  so  entirely, 
that  all  that  survived  of  vast  populations  and  a  compar- 
atively high  civilization  have  been  broken  temples,  and 
great  burial  mounds  locked  up  in  the  solitudes  of  deep 
forests;  and  further,  that  whole  peoples,  exhausted  by 
27* 


318  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

their  vices,  have  sunk  into  such  a  state  of  clepi-ession  and 
decline,  that,  unable  any  longer  to  supply  the  inevitable 
waste  of  nature,  they  have  dropt  into  extinction.  And 
such  may  have  been  the  condition  of  the  human  race 
during  that  period  of  portentous  evil  and  violence  which 
preceded  the  deluge.  We  know  that  the  good  came  at 
length  to  be  restricted  to  a  single  family;  and  even  the 
evil,  instead  of  being  numbered,  as  now,  by  hundreds  of 
millions,  may  have  been  comprised  in  a  few  thousands, 
or  at  most  a  few  hundred  thousands,  that  were  becoming 
fewer  every  year,  from  the  indulgence  of  fierce  and  evil 
passions,  in  a  time  of  outrage  and  violence.  The  Creator 
of  the  race  may  have  dealt  with  it  on  this  occasion  of 
judgment,  as  a  florist  does  with  some  decaying  plant, 
which  he  cuts  down  to  the  ground  in  order  to  secure  a 
fresh  shoot  from  the  root.  At  all  events,  the  proof  of  an 
antediluvian  population  at  once  enormously  great  and  very 
largely  spread  must  rest  with  those  who  hold,  with  Dr. 
Kitto,  that  its  numbers  and  extent  were  such  as  to  militate 
against  the  probability  of  a  deluge  merely  partial ;  and  any 
such  proof  we  may,  with  the  good  old  Bishop  of  Worces- 
ter, well  "despair  of  ever  seeing"  produced.  Even  admit- 
ting, however,  for  the  argument's  sake,  that  the  inhabitants 
of  the  Old  World  may  have  been  as  numerous  as  those  of 
China  are  now, — a  number  estimated  by  the  recent  author- 
ities at  more  than  three  hundred  and  fifty  millions,  —  and 
the  admission  is  certainly  greatly  larger  than  there  is  argu- 
ment enough  on  the  other  side  to  extort, — a  comparatively 
pai-tial  deluge  would  have  been  sufticient  to  secure  their 
destruction.  In  short,  it  may  be  fairly  concluded,  that  if 
there  be  a  show  of  reason  against  the  theory  of  a  flood 
mei-e\}^  local,  it  has  not  yet  been  exhibited.  Even  Dr. 
Kitto,  Avith  all  his  ingenuity  and  learning,  has  failed  to  array 
against  it  arguments  of  any  real  weight  or  cogency ;  and 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  319 

in  ray  next  address  I  may  be  perhaps  able  to  show  you 
that  the  objeetions  -which,  on  tlie  other  liand,  bear  against 
the  antagonist  liypothesis,  are  at  once  solid  and  numerous. 
I  may  be  mistaken  in  my  estimate  ;  but  for  some  years  past 
I  have  regarded  them  as  altogether  insurmountable. 


LECTURE  EIGHTH. 

THE   NOACIIIAN   DELUGE. 
PART  II. 

A  CENTURY  has  not  yet  gone  by  since  all  the  organic 
remains  on  which  the  science  of  Palaeontology  is  now 
founded  were  regarded  as  the  wrecks  of  a  universal  del- 
uge, and  held  good  in  evidence  that  the  waters  had  pre- 
vailed in  every  known  country,  and  risen  over  the  highest 
hills.  Intelligent  observers  Avere  not  wanting  at  even  an 
earlier  time  who  maintained  that  a  temporary  flood  could 
not  have  occasioned  phenomena  so  extraordinary.  Such 
was  the  view  taken  by  several  Italian  naturalists  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  and  in  Britain  by  the  distinguished  math- 
ematician Hooke,  the  contemporary,  and  in  some  matters 
rival,  of  XcM'ton.  But  the  conclusions  of  these  observers, 
now  so  generally  adopted,  were  regarded  both  in  Popish 
and  Protestant  countries  as  but  little  friendly  to  Reve- 
lation ;  and  so  strong  was  the  opposite  opinion,  and  so 
generally  were  petrifactions  regarded  as  so  many  proofs  of 
a  universal  deluge,  that  Voltaire  felt  himself  constrained, 
first  in  his  Dissertation  drawn  up  for  the  Academy  at 
Bologna,  and  next  in  his  article  on  shells  in  the  Philosophi- 
cal Dictionary,  to  take  up  the  question  as  charged  with  one 
of  the  evidences  of  that  Revelation  which  it  was  the  great 
design  of  his  life  to  subvert.  And  with  an  unfairness  too 
characteristic  of  his  sparkling  but  unsolid  writings,  we  find 
him  arguing,  that  all  fossil  shells  were  either  those  of  fresh 


THE   NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  321 

water  lakes  and  rivers  evaporated  during  dry  seasons,  or 
of  land  snails  developed  in  unusual  abundance  during  wet 
ones ;  or  that  they  were  shells  which  had  been  diopped 
from  the  hats  of  pilgrims  on  their  way  from  the  Holy 
Land  to  their  homes ;  or  that  they  were  shells  that  had 
gone  astray  from  cabinets  and  museums ;  or,  finally,  that 
they  were  not  shells  at  all,  but  mere  shell-like  forms,  pro- 
duced by  some  occult  process  of  nature  in  the  bowels  of 
the  earth.  In  fine,  in  order  to  destroy  the  credibility  of 
the  Noachian  deluge,  the  brilliant  Frenchman  exhausted 
every  expedient  in  his  attempts  to  neutralize  that  Pala3on- 
tologic  evidence  on  which  geologists  now  found  some  of 
their  most  legitimate  conchisions.  But  he  only  succeeded, 
instead,  in  producing  compositions  of  Avhich  every  sentence 
contains  either  an  absurdity  or  an  untruth,  and  in  raising  a 
reaction  against  the  special  school  of  infidelity  which  he 
had  founded,  that  at  length  bore  it  down.  He  wrote  in 
le  middle  of  the  Paris  basin,  with  its  multitude  of  fossil 
shells  and  bones;  and,  when  penning  his  article  for  the 
Encyclopaedia,  he  had,  he  tells  us,  a  boxful  of  the  shell- 
charged  soil  of  the  Faluns  of  Touraine  actually  before 
him;  but  the  deluge  had  to  be  piit  down,  whatever  the 
nature  or  bearing  of  the  facts;  and  so  he  could  find  in 
either  no  evidence  of  a  time  when  the  sea  had  covered 
the  land.  He  foimd,  instead,  only  "  some  mussels,  because 
there  were  ponds  in  the  neighborhood,"  As  for  the  "spiral 
petrifactions  termed  cornu  ammonis^''  of  Avhich  the  Jurassic 
Alps  are  full,  they  were  not  nautili,  he  said  ;  they  could  be 
nothing  else  than  reptiles;  seeing, that  reptiles  tak^  almost- 
always  the  forrrt  of  a  spiral  when  not  in  motion  ;  and -it  "vvas 
surely  more  likely,  that  when  petrified  they  should  still 
retain  the  spiral  disposition,  than  that  *'  the  Indian  Ocean 
should  have  long  ago  overflowed  the  mountains  of  Europe." 
Were  there  not,  however,  real  shells  of  the  Syrian  type  in 


322         THE  NOACHIAN  DELUGE. 

France  and  Italy?  Perhaps  so.  But  ought  "we  not  to 
recollect,"  he  asked,  "  the  numberless  bands  of  pilgrims 
who  carried  theii-  money  to  the  Holy  Land,  and  brought 
back  shells  ?  or  was  it  preferable  to  think  that  the  sea  of 
Joppa  and  Sidon  had  covered  Burgundy  and  Milanais  ?  " 
As  for  the  seeming  shells  of  the  less  superficial  deposits, 
"Are  we  sure,"  he  inquired,  "that  the  soil  of  the  earth 
cannot  produce  fossils?"  Agate  in  some  specimens  con- 
tains its  apparent  sprigs  of  moss,  which,  we  know,  never 
existed  as  the  vegetable  they  resemble ;  and  why  should 
not  the  earth  have,  in  like  manner,  produced  its  apparent 
shells  ?  Or  are  not  many  of  these  shells  mere  lake  or  river 
petrifactions  ?  —  one  never  sees  among  them  "  true  marine 
substances"!!  "If  there  were  any,  why  have  we  never 
seen  bones  of  sea  dogs,  sharks,  and  whales  ? " ! ! !  And 
thus  he  ran  on,  in  the  belief  apparently  that  he  had  to 
deal  with  but  an  ignorant  priesthood,  too  little  acquainted 
with  the  facts  to  make  out  a  case  against  him  in  behalf 
of  the  Mosaic  narrative,  and  whom  at  least,  should  argu- 
ment fail  him,  he  could  vanquish  with  a  joke. 

There  was,  however,  a  young  German,  who  had  not  at 
the  time  quite  made  up  his  mind  either  for  the  French 
school  or  against  it,  who  was  no  uninterested  reader  of 
Voltaire's  disquisitions  on  fossil  shells.  And  this  young 
man  was  destined  to  be  in  the  coming  age  what  the 
Frenchman  had  been  in  the  closing  one,  —  the  leading 
mind  of  Europe,  He,  too,  had  been  looking  at  fossils ; 
and  having  no  case  to  make  out  either  for  or  against 
Moses,  or  any  one  else,  he  had  received  in  a  fair  and 
candid  spirit  the  evidence  with  which  they  were  charged. 
And  the  gross  dishonesty  of  Voltaire  in  the  matter  formed 
so  decided  a  turning  point  with  him,  that  from  that  time 
forward  he  employed  his  great  influence  in  bearing  do^Ti 
the  French  school  of  infidelity,  as  a  school  detestably  false 


THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE.  323 

and  hollow ;  —  a  warning,  surely,  to  all,  whether  they  stand 
up  for  Revelation  or  against  it,  of  the  danger  of  being, 
like  the  witty  Frenchman,  "  wicked  overmuch."  "  To  us 
youths,"  says  Goethe,  in  his  Autobiography,  "with  our 
German  love  of  truth  and  nature,  the  factious  dishonesty 
of  Voltaire,  and  the  perversion  of  so  many  worthy  sul)- 
jects,  became  more  and  more  annoying,  and  we  daily 
strengthened  ourselves  in  our  aversion  from  him.  He 
could  never  have  done  with  degrading  religion  and  the 
sacred  books  for  the  sake  of  injuring  priestcraft,  as  he 
called  it ;  and  thus  produced  in  me  many  an  unpleasing 
sensation.  But  when  I  now  learned,  that  to  weaken  the 
tradition  of  a  Deluge,  he  had  denied  all  petrified  shells, 
and  only  admitted  them  as  lusiis  naturce^  he  entirely  lost 
my  confidence ;  for  my  own  eyes  had  on  the  Baschberg 
plamly  enough  shown  me  that  I  stood  on  the  bottom  of  an 
old  dried-up  sea,  among  the  exuvim  of  its  ancient  inhabit- 
ants. These  mountains  had  certainly  been  once  covered 
with  waves,  —  whether  before  or  during  the  Deluge  did 
not  concern  me:  it  was  enough  that  the  valley  of  the 
Rhine  had  been  a  monstrous  lake,  —  a  bay  extending 
beyond  the  reach  of  eyesight :  out  of  this  I  was  not  to 
be  talked.  I  thought  much  more  of  advancing  in  the 
knowledge  of  lands  and  mountains,  let  what  would  be 
the  result."  I  know  not  in  the  whole  history  of  opinion 
a  more  instructive  passage  than  this.  Little  could  Vol- 
taire have  known  what  he  was  in  reality  doing,  or  how 
egregiously  he  was  overreaching  himself,  when,  in  labor- 
ing to  bear  down  the  evidence  borne  by  fossils  to  the 
ancient  uj)heavals  and  cataclysms,  he  suffered  himself  to 
make  use  of  assertions  and  arguments  so  palpably  unfair. 
And  those  who  employ,  in  their  zeal  against  tlie  geolo- 
gists, what  is  still  exceedingly  common,  —  the  Voltairean 
style  of  argument,  —  especially  if  they  employ  it  in  what 


324  THE    N  O  A  C  H  I  A  X    D  E  L  U  G  E . 

they  deem  the  behalf  of  religion,  might  do  well  to  inquire 
whether  they  are  not  in  some  little  danger  of  producing 
the  Voltairean  result. 

No  man  acquainted  with  the  general  outlines  of  Palseon- 
tology,  or  the  true  succession  of  the  sedimentary  forma- 
tions, has  been  able  to  believe,  during  the  last  half  century, 
that  any  proof  of  a  general  deluge  can  be  derived  from  the 
older  geologic  systems,  —  Palaeozoic,  Secondary,  or  Terti- 
ary. It  has  been  held,  however,  by  accomplished  geolo- 
gists, within  even  the  last  thirty  years,  that  such  proof 
might  be  successfully  sought  for  in  what  are  known  as  the 
superficial  deposits.  Such  Avas  the  belief  of  Cuvier,  —  a 
man  who,  even  in  geologic  science,  which  was  certainly  not 
his  peculiar  province,  exerted  a  mighty  influence  over  the 
thinking  of  other  men.  "I  agree  with  MM.  Deluc  and 
Polomieu  in  thinking,"  we  find  him  saying,  in  his  widely 
famed  "  Theory  of  the  Earth,"  "  that  if  anything  in  geol- 
ogy be  established,  it  is,  that  the  surface  of  our  globe  has 
undergone  a  great  and  sudden  revolution,  the  date  of 
which  cannot  be  referred  to  a  much  earlier  period  than 
■five  or  six  thousand  years  ago."  But  from  the  same  cele- 
brated work  we  learn  that  Cuvier  held  that  this  sudden 
catastrophe,  —  occasioned,  as  he  supposed,  by  an  elevation 
of  the  sea  bottom  and  a  submergence  of  the  previously 
existing  land,  —  had  not  been  universal ;  seeing  he  could 
entertain  the  belief  that  the  three  great  races  of  the 
human  family,  —  Ethiopian,  Mongolian,  and  Caucasian, — 
had  all  escaped  from  it  in  several  directions.  In  referring 
to  the  marked  peculiarities  of  the  Mongolian  race,  so  very- 
distinct  from  the  Caucasian,  he  merely  intimates,  that  he 
was  "tempted  to  believe  their  ancestors  and  ours  had 
escaped  the  great  catastrophe  on  difierent  sides;"  but  in 
dwelling  on  the  still  more  marked  peculiarities  of  the 
Negroes,  we  find  him  explicitly  stating,  that,   "all  their 


THE    N  O  A  C  H  I  A  N    DELUGE.  825 

characters  clearly  show  that  they  had  escaped  from  the 
overwhelming  deluge  at  another  point  than  the  Caucasian 
Und  Altaic  races ;  from  which  they  had  pei-haps  been  sepa- 
T-ated,"  he  adds,  "for  a  long  time  previous  to  the  occurrence 
of  that  event."  For  a  season,  geologists  of  high  standing 
in  our  flwn  country,  such  as  Buckland  and  Conybeare,  fol- 
loAved  Cuvier  so  far  as  to  hold,  that  the  superficial  deposits 
bore  evidence  everywhere  of  a  great  cataclysm,  the  last  of 
the  geologic  catastrophes ;  and  which  might  be  identified, 
they  believed,  with  the  Noachian  Deluge.  Against  this 
view  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  Scottish  naturalists, 
Dr.  John  Fleming,  raised  a  vigorous  protest  as  early  as 
the  year  1826,  and  conclusively  showed  that  no  temporary 
flood  could  have  produced  the  existing  ai)pearances.  And 
so  thoroughly  were  his  facts  and  reasonings  confirmed  by 
subsequent  discovery,  that  the  geologists  of  name  who  had 
acquiesced,  wholly  or  in  part,  in  the  Cuvierian  view,  read 
in  succession  their  recantations :  Dr.  Buckland  in  especial, 
who  had  written  most  largely  on  the  subject,  and  com- 
mitted himself  most  thoroughly,  did  so  a  very  few  years 
after:  nor  does  the  hypothesis  of  Cuvier  appear  to  have 
been  since  adopted  by  any  writer  of  scientific  reputation, 
Insl^d,  therefore,  of  contending  with  arguments  or  in- 
ferences wdiich  there  are  now  no  parties  in  the  field  tr 
maintain,  I  shall  briefly  refer  to  a  few  of  the  leading  char- 
acteristics of  those  superficial  deposits  on  which  the  aban- 
doned conclusions  were  originally  based,  and  show,  in  the 
passing,  that  they  are  not  such  as  a  temporary  deluge 
could  have  produced. 

The  superficial  deposits  include  what  is  known  as  the 
mammaliferous  crag,  the  drift,  the  boulder  and  brick  clays, 
the  stratified  sands  and  gi-avels,  the  travelled  rocks,  the 
osars,  and  moraines  of  the  higher  latitudes.  For  it  is  a 
fact  very  significant  in  its  bearings  on  the  diluvial  contro- 
28 


/ 


326  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

versy,  that  it  is  in  the  highiic4atitudes  m  both  hemispheres 
that  these  pecuUar  dei^osits  ai-e  chiefly  to  be  found.  They 
have  been  traced  in  Patagonia  in  the  one  hemisphere,  from 
the  southern  Hmits  of  the  country  to  the  forty-first  degree 
of  south  latitude ;  and  in  Europe  in  the  other,  to  the  for- 
tieth ;  and  in  America  to  even  the  thirty-eighth  degree  of 
north  latitude.  But  in  the  great  belt,  nearly  eighty  de- 
grees in  breadth,  which,  encircling  the  globe  from  east  to 
west,  includes  with  the  torrid  the  warmer  portions  of  the 
tepiperate  zones,  they  have  scarce  any  existence  at  all,  or 
exist  at  least  in  different  forms  and  exceedingly  reduced 
proportions.  The  superficial  deposits,  in  their  most  charac- 
teristic conditions,  are  deposits  of  the  colder  portions  of 
the  globe,  and  in  many  parts  iudicate^at  there  prevailed 
duringjbeir_fQrnintion--a-innah_seYfirfiJL.cliinate  than  now 
obtains  in  the  regions  in  which  they  occur.  The  shells 
which  they  contain  in  Britain,  for  instance,  though  almost 
all  of  existing  species,  are  many  of  them  such  as  are  not 
now  to  be  found  in  the  British  seas,  but  in  seas  about 
ten  degrees  further  to  the  north ;  and  there  is  evidence 
that  the  line  of  perpetual  snow  must  ha^e  descended  at 
the  time  to  a  lower  level  than  that  attained  by  our  second- 
class  hills,  and  that  almost  every  Highland  valley  had  its 
glacier.  They  represent,  too,  vast  pei-iods  of  time  ;  —  ear- 
lier periods,  during  which  the  land  gradually  sank,  till  only 
its  higher  eminences  were  uncovered,  and  great  floats  of 
icebergs  went  careering  over  its  submerged  plains  and 
lower  hills ;  and  later  periods,  during  which  the  land  as 
gradually  arose,  after  apparently  many  pauses  and  oscilla- 
tions, until  at  length,  when  it  had  reached  a  level  scarce 
^  eighty  feet  liigher  than  that  which  it  at  present  maintains, 
the  climate  softened,  and  the  glaciers  which  had  formed 
in  the  later  times  among  its  hills  \;ltimately  disappeared. 
Beds  of  sea-shells  of  the  boreal  type,  that  belong  to  those 


THE    NO  AC  II I  AN    DELUGE.  327 

ice  ages,  may  be  still  found  occupying  the  places  in  which 
they  had  lived  and  died,  many  miles  inland,  and  liundreds 
of  feet  over  the  sea  level.  Boring  shells,  such  as  the  pho- 
lodadidae,  may  be  detected  far  out  of  sight  of  the  ocean, 
still  occupying  the  cells  which  they  had  scooped  out  for 
themselves  in  hard  limestone  or  yielding  shale ;  and  serpula 
and  nuliporate  encrustations  may  be  seen  still  adhering  to 
rocks  raised  to  giddy  elevations  over  the  sea.  The  group 
of  mammals,  however,  which  lived  during  this  period,  and 
to  whose  abundant  tusks  and  skeletons  one  of  its  older 
deposits  (the  mammaliferous  crag)  owes  its  name,  was 
marked  by  so  peculiar  a  character,  that  evidence  of  a  uni- 
versal deluge  has  been  often  soiight  for  in  their  remains. 
The  group, — .that  Avhich  immediately  preceded  the  animals 
of  our  own  times,  and  included  not  a  few  of  the  indigenous 
species  which  still  inhabit  our  country,  —  was  chiefly  re- 
markable for  containing  many  genera,  all  of  Avhose  existing 
species  are  exotic.  It  had  its  great  elephant,  its  two  species 
of  rhinoceros,  its  hippopotamus,  its  hytena,  its  tiger,  and 
its  monkey  ;  and  much  ingenious  calculation  has  been  em- 
ployed by  writers  such  as  Granville  Penn,  in  attempting  to 
shoAV  how  these  remains  might  have  been  transported  from 
the  intertropical  regions  during  the  Flood,  not  only  to 
Britain,  but  even  to  the  northern  wastes  of  Siberia,  —  a 
voyage  of  fi-om  four  to  five  thousand  miles.  There  are 
instances  on  record  in  which  the  bodies  of  the  drowned 
have  been  drifted  from  ninety  to  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
from  the  spot  where  they  had  been  first  submerged ;  but 
they  have  always  been  found,  in  these  cases,  in  a  condition 
of  sad  mutilation  and  decay ;  w' hereas  the  carcass  of  the 
ancient  elephant  which  Avas  discovered,  a  little  ere  the 
commencement  of  the  present  century,  locked  up  in  ice  in 
Siberia,  three  thousand  six  hundred  miles  from  where  ele« 
phants  now  live,  w^as  in  such  a  state  of  excellent  keeoinjl, 


328  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

that  the  bears  and  dogs  fed  upon  its  flesh.     It  seems  a  sig- 
nificant circumstance  too,  that  tlie  remains  of  these  fossil 
elephants,  tigers,  and  hyaenas,  should  be  associated  in  even 
our  own  country  with  those  of  well  known  northern  spe- 
cies,—  with  the  remains  of  the  reindeer,  of  the  red  deer, 
of  the  Lithuanian  auroch,  of  the  Enropean  beaver,  of  the 
European  wolf,  of  the  wild  cat,  the  fox,  and  the  otter. 
Writers,  however,  such  as  Mr.  Penn,  got  over  both  difticul- 
ties.     He  showed,  for  instance,  how  a  ship  had  once  run 
across  the  Atlantic  under  bare  poles,  during  an  almost  con- 
tiified  hurricane,  at  the  rate  of  two  hundred  and  eighty- 
eight  miles  in  twenty-four  hours,  —  nearly  the  rate  at  which 
the  great  Amei-ican  steamers  cross  the  same  ocean  now ; 
and  why,  he  asked,  might  not  the  carcasses  of  elephants 
have  drifted  northwards  at  an  equal  rate  on  the  tides  of 
the  deluge  ?     And  as  for  the  mixed  character  of  the  group 
Avith  v/hich  these  remains  are  found  associated,  that  was 
exactly  what  Mr.  Penn  would  have  expected  in  the  circum- 
stances.     It  was  the  result  of  a  tumultuary  flood,  which 
had  brought  together  in  our  northern  region  the  floating 
carcasses  of  the  animals  of  all  climates,  to  sink  in  unwonted 
companionship,  when  putrefaction  had  done  its  work,  into 
the  same  deposits.     He  had,  however,  unluckily  overlooked 
the  fact,  that  comparative  anatomy  is  in  reaUty  a  science ; 
and  further,   that  it   is  a  science  of  which  men  such  as 
Cuvier  and  Owen  know  a  great  deal  more  than  the  men 
who  never  studied  it,  however  respectable.     It  is  the  re- 
corded  decision  of  these   great   anatomists,  —  a   decision 
which  has  been  many  times  tested  and  confirmed,  —  that 
the   northern   species  of   elephant,    rhinoceros,   tiger,  and 
hysena,  were  entirely  difierent  from  the  intertropical  spe- 
cies ;  that  they  differed  from  them  very  considerably  more 
than  the  ass  differs  from  the  horse,  or  the  dog  from  the 
wolf;   and  that,  while  there   is  a  preponderating  amount 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE  32» 

of  evidence  to  show  that  thej'^  were  natives  of  the  coun- 
tries in  wtiich  their  remains  are  now  found,  there  is  not 
a  shadow  of  evidence  to  show  that  they  had  ever  lived, 
or  could  have  Uved,  in  an  intertro[)ical  country.  Of  the 
northern  elephant,  it  is  positively  known,  from  the  Si- 
berian specimen,  that  it  was  covered,  like  many  other 
subarctic  animals,  with  long  hair,  and  a  thick  crisp  under- 
growth of  wool,  about  three  inches  in  length,  —  certainly 
not  an  intertropical  provision  ;  and  so  entirely  different  was 
it  in  form  from  either  of  the  existing  species,  African  or 
Indian,  that  a  child  could  be  taught  in  a  single  lesson' to 
distinguish  it  by  the  tusks  alone.  In  fine,  the  assumption 
that  challenges  the  remains  of  the  old  Pleistocene  camiv- 
ora  and  pachydermata  as  those  of  intertropical  species 
brought  northwards  by  a  universal  deluge,  is  about  as 
well  based  and  sound  as  if  it  challenged  the  bones  of 
foxes  occasionally  found  in  our  woods  for  the  remains  of 
dogs  of  Aleppo  or  Askalon  brought  into  Britain  by  the 
Crusaders,  or  as  if  it  pronounced  a  dead  ass  to  be  one 
of  the  cavalry  horses  of  the  fatal  charge  of  Balaklava, 
transported  to  England  from  the  Crimea  as  a  relic  of 
the  fight.  The  hypothesis  confounds  as  a  species  the 
Rosinante  of  Quixote  with  the  Dapple  of  Sancho  Panza, 
and  frames  its  ai'gument  on  the  mistake. 

That  this  extinct  group  of  animals  inhabited  for  ages  the 
countries  in  which  their  remains  ai-e  now  embeaded,  is 
rendered  evident  by  their  great  numbers  in  some  localities, 
and  from  their  occurrence  in  various  states  of  preservation, 
and  in  beds  of  various  ages.  The  five  hundred  mammoths 
whose  tusks  and  grinders  were  dragged  up  in  thirteen 
years  by  the  oyster  dredgers  of  the  Norfolk  coast  from 
a  tract  of  submerged  drift,  could  not  all  have  been 
contemporary  in  a  small  corner  of  England,  but  must  have 
represented  several  generations.  And  of  course  the  two 
28* 


330  THE    XOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

tliousand  grinders  brought  up  from  the  exposed  surface  of 
the  drift  •  must  have  borne  but  a  small  proportion  to  the 
thousands  still  dispersed  throughout  the  entire  depth  of 
the  deposit.  Any  argument,  however,  foimded  on  the 
mere  numbers  of  these  elephantine  tusks  and  grinders, 
and  which  evaded  the  important  question  of  species, 
might  be  eluded,  however  unfairly,  by  the  assertors  of 
a  universal  deluge.  Floods  certainly  do  at  times  accumu- 
late, in  great  heaps,  bodies  of  the  same  specific  gravity; 
and  why  might  not  a  universal  flood  have  accumulated 
on  this  special  tract  of  drift,  the  carcasses  of  many  ele- 
phants? But  it  will  be  found  greatly  more  difficult  to 
elude  the  ingenious  argument  on  the  general  question  of 
Professor  Owen.  Next,  perhaps,  to  the  extinct  elephant, 
one  of  the  most  numerous  animals  of  this  ancient  group 
was  the  great  Irish  elk,  Megaceros  Hibemicus^  a  creature 
that,  measured  to  the  top  of  its  enormous  antlers,  stood  ten 
feet  four  inches  in  height,  and  exceeded  in  bulk  and  size 
the  largest  horses.  Like  all  other  species  of  the  deer 
family,  the  creature  annually  shed  and  renewed  its  horns ; 
"  and  a  male  deer  may  be  reckoned,"  says  Professor  Owen, 
"to  have  left  about  eight  pairs  of  antlers,  besides  its 
bones,  to  testify  its  former  existence  upon  the  earth.  But 
as  the  female  has  usually  no  antlers,  our  expectations  might 
be  limited  to  the  discovery  of  four  times  as  many  pairs 
of  antlers  as  skeletons  in  the  superficial  deposits  of  the 
countries  in  which  such  deer  have  lived  and  died.  The 
actual  proportion  of  the  fossil  antlers  of  the  great  extinct 
species  of  British  Pliocene  deer  (which  antlers  are  proved 
by  the  form  of  their  base  to  have  been  shed  by  the  living 
animals)  to  the  fossil  bones  of  the  same  species,  is  some- 
what greater  than  in  the  above  calculation.  Although, 
therefore,  it  may  be  contended  that  the  swollen  carcass  of 
a  drowned  exotic  deer  might  be  borne  along  a  diluvial 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 


331 


wave  to  a  considerable  distance,  and  its  bones  ultimately 
deposited  fai*  from  its  native  soil,  it  is  not  credible  that  all 
the  solid  shed  antlers  of  such  species  of  deer  coidd  he 
carried  hu  the  same  cause  to  the  same  distance,'  or  that 
any  of  them  could  be  rolled  for  a  short  distance,  with  other 


Fiar.  111. 


MEGACEROS    HIBERNICUS. 


{Irish  Elk.) 

heavy  debris  of  a  mighty  torrent,  without  fracture  and 
signs  of  friction.  But  the  shed  antlers  of  the  large  extinct 
species  of  deer  found  in  this  island  and  in  Ireland  have 


332  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

commonly  their  parts  or  branches  entire  as  Avhen  they  fell ; 
and  the  fractm-ecl  specimens  are  generally  found  in  caves, 
and  shoio  marks  of  the  teeth  of  the  ossivorous  hymnas  by 
which  they  had  been  gnawed ;  thus  at  the  same  time 
revealing  the  mode  in  which  they  were  introduced  into 
those  caves,  and  j^rovlng  the  contemporaneous  existence  in 
this  island  of  both  kinds  of  mammcdia.'''' 

But  the  contents  of  the  bone  caves,  consisting  in  large 
part  of  the  extinct  mammals,  ought  of  themselves  to  be 
decisi\'e  in  this  question.  As  the  opening  of  the  Kirkdale 
cavern  is  only  about  four  feet  each  Avay,  a  diluvial  Avave, 
charged  with  the  wreck  of  the  lower  latitudes,  could 
scarce  have  Avashed  into  such  an  orifice  any  considerable 
number  of  the  intertropical  animals.  And  yet  there  has 
been  found  in  this  cave,  —  \\\\\\.  the  teeth  of  a  very  young 
mammoth,  of  a  very  great  tiger,  of  a  tiger-Uke  animal 
whose  genus  is  extinct,  of  a  rhinoceros,  and  of  a  hippopot- 
amus,—  the  fragmentary  remains  of  from  two  to  three 
hundred  hyaenas.  Further,  even  supposing,  Avhat  is  im- 
possible, that  a  diluvial  Avave  had  SAvept  them  all  from  the 
tropics  into  the  four-feet  hole,  on  Avhat  principle  is  it  to  be 
explained  that  the  bones  thuS  Avashed  into  the  cave  should 
be  all  gnawed  bones,  even  those  of  the  hyaenas  themselves, 
Avhereas  the  bones  of  the  same  creatures  found  in  the 
mamraaliferous  deposits  of  the  country  bear  no  marks  of 
teeth  ?  Mr.  Granville  Penn,  hoAvever,  gets  over  the  dif- 
ficulty of  the  cave,  AA^hich  is  holloAved,  I  may  mention,  in 
a  limestone  of  the  Oolitic  series,  inclosing  the  ammonite 
and  belemnite,  by  asserting  that  its  mammaliferous  con- 
tents may  be  som,ewhat  older  than  itself!  The  lime- 
stone existed,  he  holds,  as  but  a  mere  unformed  pulp  at 
the  time  the  intertropical  animals  came  floating  north- 
Avards :  they  sank  into  it ;  the  gasses  evolved  during 
putrefaction  blew  up  the  plastic  lime  above  them  into  a 


THE    NOACHlAI^i    DELUGE  333 

great  oblong  bubble,  somewhat  as  a  glass-blower  blows 
up  a  bottle ;  and  hence  the  Kirkdale  cavern,  witli  its 
gnawed  bones  and  its  amazing  number  of  teeth.  And 
certainly  a  geologic  argument  of  this  ingenious  character 
has  one  signal  advantage,  —  it  is  in  no  danger  whatever 
of  being  answered  by  the  geologists.  Mr.  Penn,  in  a 
second  edition  of  his  work,  expressed  some  surprise  that 
an  Edinburgh  Reviewer  should  have  merely  stated  his 
argument  without  replying  to  it !  ! 

But  I  need  not  dwell  on  the  arguments  for  a  universal 
deluge  which  have  been  derived  from  the  superficial 
deposits.  They  all  belong  to  an  immature  age  of  geologic 
science,  and  are  of  no  value  whatever.  Let  us  pass  rather 
to  the  consideration  of  tiie  facts  and  arguments  which 
militate  against  the  universality  of  tlie  catastrophe. 

The  form  and  dimensions  of  Noah's  ark  are  definitely 
given  in  the  sacred  record.  It  seems  to  have  been  a  great 
oblong  box,  somewhat  like  a  wooden  granary,  three 
stories  high,  and  furnished  with  a  roof  apparently  of  the 
ordinary  angular  shape,  but  with  a  somewhat  broader 
ridge  than  common ;  and  it  measured  three  hundred 
cubits  in  length,  fifty  cubits  in  breadth,  and  thirty  cubits 
in  height.  A  good  deal  of  controversy  has,  however, 
ai'isen  regarding  the  cubit  emj^loyed  ;  some  holding,  with 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  and  most  of  the  older  theologians, 
such  as  Shuckford  and  Hales,  that  the  Noachian  cubit 
was  what  is  known  as  the  common  or  natural  cubit,  "  con- 
taining," says  Sir  Walter,  "  one  foot  and  a  half,  or  a  length 
equal  to  that  of  the  human  fore-arm  measured  from  the 
sharp  of  the  elbow  to  the  point  of  the  middle  finger  ; " 
othei's  contending  that  it  was  the  palm-cubit,  "  which 
taketh,"  adds  my  authority,  "  one  handful  more  than  the 
common ; "  yet  others,  the  royal  or  Persian  cubit  of 
twenty-one  inches;  and  so  on;  for  there  are,  it   seems,  ^ve 


334  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE 

several  kinds  of  cubit  to  choose  from,  all  differing  each 
from  the  others.  The  controversy  is  one  in  which  there 
is  exceeding  little  footing  for  any  party.  I  am  inclined, 
however,  to  adopt,  with  Raleigh  and  Hales,  the  natural 
cubit,  for  the  following  reason.  The  given  dimensions  of 
the  ark  form  the  oldest  example  of  measurement  of  which 
we  have  any  record ;  and  all,  or  almost  all,  the  older  and 
simpler  standards  of  measure  bear  reference  to  portions 
of  the  human  frame.  There  is  the  span,  the  palm,  the 
hand-breadth,  the  thumb-breadth  (or  inch),  the  hair- 
breadth, and  the  foot.  The  simple  fisherman  on  our 
coasts  stUl  measures  off  his  fathoms  by  stretching  out 
both  his  arms  to  the  full ;  the  village  semj^stress  still  tells 
off  her  cloth-breadths  by  finger-lengths  and  nails,'  the 
untaught  tiller  of  the  soil  still  estimates  the  area  of  his 
little  field  hy  pacing  along  its  sides.  Man's  first  and  most 
obvious  expedient,  when  he  sets  himself  to  measure,  is  to 
employ  his  own  person  as  his  standard ;  and  the  first  or 
common  cubit  was  a  measure  of  this  natural  description 
equal  in  length  to  the  extended  fore-arm  and  hand.  All 
the  other  cubits  were  artificial  comj^ounds  of  after  intro- 
duction ;  and  so,  in  the  absence  of  direct  evidence  on  the 
point,  I  accept  the  most  natural  and  oldest  cubit  as  in  all 
probability  the  one  employed  in  the  oldest  recorded  piece 
of  cubit  measurement.  And  tlie  ark,  if  measured  by  the 
common  or  natural  cubit,  must  have  been  a  vessel  four 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  length,  seventy-five  feet  in 
breadth,  and  forty-five  feet  in  height.  Dr.  Kitto,  however, 
though  we  find  him  remarking  that  in  computations  of 
Scripture  measures  the  cubit  may  be  regarded  as  half  a 
yard  (Sir  Walter's  estimate),  adopts,  in  his  own  computa- 
tion of  the  size  of  the  ark,  without  assigning  any  reason 
why,  the  palm-cubit,  or  cubit  of  twenty-one  inches  and 
nearly  nine  lines  (21.888  inches);  and,  waving  all  contro- 


THE    NO  A  CHI  AN    DELUGE.  335 

vers)'  on  the  question,  let  us,  for  the  argument's  sake, 
admit  the  larger  measure.  Let  us,  —  however  much  in- 
clined to  hold  with  Raleigh,  Shuckford,  and  Hales, — 
agree  with  Dr.  Kitto  that  the  ark  was  five  hundred  and 
forty-seven  feet  in  length,  by  ninety-one  feet  in  breadth. 
Such  dimensions,  multiplied  by  three,  the  number  of 
stories  in  the  vessel,  would  give  an  area  equal  to  about 
one  seventh  that  of  the  great  Crystal  Palace  of  1851,  Or, 
to  take  a  more  definite  illustration  from  the  same  vast 
building,  the  area  of  the  three  floors  of  the  ark,  taken 
together,  would  fall  short  by  about  twenty-eight  thousand 
square  feet  of  that  of  the  northern  gallery  of  the  Palace, 
which  measured  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  forty- 
eight  feet  in  length,  by  ninety-six  feet  in  breadth.  And 
thus,  yielding  to  our  opponents  their  own  large  measure- 
ments, let  us  now  see  whether  the  non-universality  of  the 
deluge  cannot  be  fairly  predicated  from  the  dimensions  of 
the  ark. 

I  may  first  remark,  however,  that  measures  so  definite  as 
those  given  by  Moses  (definite,  of  course,  if  Ave  waive  the 
doubt  regarding  the  cubit  employed)  were  effectual  in 
setting  the  arithmeticians  to  work  in  all  ages  of  the  Church, 
in  order  to  determine  whether  all  the  animals  in  the  world, 
by  sevens  and  by  j^airs,  with  food  sufiicient  to  serve  them 
for  a  twelvemonth,  could  have  been  accommodated  in  th 
given  space.  It  was  a  sort  of  stock  problem,  that  required, 
it  was  thought,  no  A'^ery  high  attainments  to  solve.  Eighty 
years  have  not  yet  passed  since  kind  old  Samuel  Johnson, 
in  writing  to  little  Miss  Thrale  a  nice  little  letter,  recom- 
mending her  to  be  a  good  girl,  and  to  mind  her  arithmetic, 
advised  her  to  try  the  ark  problem.  "  If  you  can  borrow 
'  Wilkins'  Real  Character,' "  we  find  him  saying  to  the 
young  lady,  "a  folio  Avhich  perhaps  the  booksellers  can 
let  you  have,  you  will   have  a  very  curious   calculation, 


336  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

which  you  are  qualified  to  consider^  to  show  that  Xoah's 
ark  was  capable  of  holding  all  the  known  animals  of  the 
world,  with  provision  for  all  the  time  in  which  the  earth 
was  under  water."  Unluckily,  however,  though  the  dimen- 
sions of  the  ark  were  known,  the  animals  of  the  world  were 
not ;  and  so  the  question,  in  at  least  one  of  its  terms,  had 
to  be  very  frequently  restated.  Let  us  take  it  as  we  find 
it  presented  (drawn,  however,  from  a  much  older  source),  in 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  magnificent  "  History  of  the  World." 
"If  in  a  ship  of  such  greatness,"  says  this  distinguished 
man,  "  we  seek  room  for  eighty-nine  distinct  species  of 
beasts,  or,  lest  any  should  be  omitted,  for  a  hundred  several 
kinds,  Ave  shall  easily  find  place  both  for  them  and  for  the 
birds,  which  in  bigness  are  no  way  answerable  to  them, 
and  for  meat  to  sustain  them  all.  For  there  are  three 
sorts  of  beasts  whose  bodies  are  of  a  quantity  well  known ; 
the  beef,  the  sheep,  and  the  M'olf ;  to  which  the  rest  may 
be  reduced  by  saying,  according  to  Aristotle,  that  one 
elephant  is  equal  to  four  beeves,  one  lion  to  two  wolves, 
and  so  of  the  rest.  Of  beasts,  some  feed  on  vegetables, 
others  on  flesh.  There  are  one-and-thirty  kinds  of  the 
greater  sort  feeding  on  vegetables,  of  which  number  only 
three  are  clean,  according  to  the  law  of  Moses,  whereof 
seven  o."  a  kind  entered  into  the  ark,  namely,  three  couples 
for  breed,  and  one  odd  one  for  sacrifice ;  the  other  eight- 
and-twenty  kinds  "were  taken  by  two  of  each  kind ;  so  that 
in  all  there  were  in  the  ark  one-and-twenty  great  beasts 
clean,  and  six-and-fifty  unclean ;  estimable  for  largeness  as 
ninety-one  beeves ;  yet,  for  a  supplement  (lest,  perhaps, 
any  species  be  omitted),  let  them  be  valued  as  a  hundred 
and  twenty  beeves.  Of  the  lesser  sort  feeding  on  vege- 
tables were  in  the  ark  six-and-twenty  kinds,  estimable,  Avith 
good  allowance  for  supply,  as  fourscore  sheep.  Of  those 
which  devour  flesh  were  two-and-thirty  kinds,  answerable 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  337 

to  threescore  ami  four  Avolves.  All  these  two  hundred 
and  eighty  beasts  might  be  kept  in  one  story  or  room  of 
the  ark,  in  their  several  cabins ;  their  meat  in  a  second ; 
the  birds  and  their  provision  in  a  third,  with  space  to  spare 
for  Noah  and  his  family,  and  all  their  necessaries."  Such 
was  the  calculation  of  the  great  voyager  Raleigh,  —  a  man 
who  had  a  more  practical  acquaintance  with  stowage  t])an 
perhaps  any  of  the  other  writers  who  have  speculated  on 
the  capabilities  of  the  al"k;  and  his  estimate  seems  sober 
and  judicious.  It  will  be  seen,  however,  that  from  the  vast 
increase  in  our  knowledge  of  the  mammals  which  has  taken 
place  since  the  age  in  which  the  "History  of  the  World" 
was  written,  the  calculation  which  embraced  all  the  eighty- 
nine  known  animals  of  that  time  would  embrace  those  of 
but  a  single  centre  of  creation  now ;  and  that  the  estimate 
of  Sir  Walter  tells,  ih  consequence,  on  the  side,  not  of  a 
universal,  but  of  a  partial  deluge. 

As  man  extended  his  acquaintance  with  the  mammals, 
he  found  their  number  greatly  increasing  on  his  hands. 
Buffon,  like  Raleigh,  though  a  professed  naturalist,  and  a 
writer  of  admirable  genius,  had  no  very  distinct  notions  of 
species.  He  was  inclined  to  question  whether  even  the  ass 
might  not  be  merely  a  degraded  horse ;  and  confounded 
many  of  the  mammals  of  the  New  World  with  their  repre- 
sentative congeners  in  the  Old.  And  yet,  in  summing  up 
his  history  of  the  mammaliferous  division,  he  could  state, 
that  though  it  included  descriptions  of  "a  hundred  and 
thirty-four  diffei'ent  species  of  creatures  that  suckled  their 
young,  many  of  which  had  not  been  observed  or  described 
before,"  it  was  necessarily  incomplete,  as  there  were  still 
others  to  add  to  the  list,  for  whose  history  there  existed  no 
materials.  At  the  same  time  he  remarked,  however,  that 
the  "number  of  quadruped  animals  whose  existence  is 
certain  and  well  established  does  not  amount  to  more 
29 


338  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

than  two  hundred  on  the  surface  of  the  known  world.'* 
Yet  here  was  the  extreme  estimate  made  by  Raleigh,  with 
what  he  deemed  large  alloAvance  for  the  unknown  animals, 
fairly  doubled  ;  and  under  the  hands  of  more  discriminathig 
naturalists,  and  in  the  iiievitable  course  of  discovery,  the 
number  has  so  enormously  inci-eased,  that  the  "  eighty-nine 
distinct  sjiecies"  known  to  the  great  voyager  have  been 
represented  during  the  last  thirty  years  by  the  one  thou- 
sand mammals  of  Swainson's  estimate,  the  one  thousand  one 
hundred  and  forty-nine  mammals  of  Charles  Bonaparte's 
estimate,  the  one  thousand  two  hundred  and  thirty  mam- 
mals of  Winding's  estimate,  and  the  one  thousand  five 
hundred  mammals  of  Oken's  estimate.  In  the  first  edition 
of  the  admirable  "Physical  Atlas"  of  Johnston  (published 
in  1848)  there  are  one  thousand  six  hundred  and  twenty-six 
different  species  of  mammals  enumerated ;  and  in  the  second 
edition  (published  in  1856),  one  thousand  six  hundred  and 
fifty-eight  species.  And  to  this  very  extraordinary  advance 
on  the  eighty-nine  mammals  of  Raleigh,  and  the  two  hun- 
dred mammals  of  Butfon,  we  must  add  the  six  thousand 
two  hundred  and  sixty-six  birds  of  Lesson,  and  the  six 
hundred  and  fifty-seven  reptiles  of  Charles  Bonaparte ;  or 
at  least,  —  subtracting  the  sea  snakes,  and  perhaps  the 
turtles,  as  fitted  to  live  outside  the  ark,  —  his  six  hundred 
and  forly-txoo  reptiles.  * 

*  The  following  estimate  of  the  air-hreathing  vertebrates  (that  of  the 
"Phj-sical  Atlas,"  secoiul  edition,  18-30)  may  be  regarded  as  the  latest. 
It  will  be  seen  that  it  does  not  include  the  cctacea  or  the  seals :  — 

SPECIES. 

Quadrumana                  .....  170 

Marsupialia                .            .            .          ■ .            .  123 

Edentata              ......  28 

Pachydcrmata          .....  39 

Terrestrial  Carnivoi-a     .....  514 

Rodentia                    .....  604 

Ruminantia        .           .            ....  180 

1658 


TU'-i    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  339 

Such  is  the  number  of  the  known  vertebrates,  exdnsive 
of  the  fishes,  with  Avhieh  in  tliis  question  we  have  now  to 
deal.  Still,  liowever,  there  are  a  few  lingering  theologians, 
some  of  them  very  intelligent  men,  who  continue  to  regard 
the  ark  as  quite  big  enough  for  ti>cm  all.  Dr.  Hamilton  of 
Mobile,  for  instance,  after  fairly  stating  Swainson's  estimate, 
namely,  one  thousand  mammalia,  six  thousand  birds,  and 
one  thousand  five  hundred  reptiles  and  amphibiae,  goes  on 
to  say,  that  "it  must  not  be  forgotten,  that  of  all  these,  the 
vastly  greater  proportion  are  small ;  and  that  numbers  of 
them  could  be  placed  together  in  the  same  compartment 
of  the  ark."  This,  however,  permit  me  to  say  with  all 
respect,  is  not  meeting  the  real  difircvilty.  No  doubt  many 
of  the  birds  are  small,  —  many  of  the  reptiles  are  small, — 
many  even  of  the  mammals  are  small, —  many  small  animals 
were  known  in  the  days  of  Raleigh,  and  a  much  greater 
number  of  small  animals  are  known  now ;  but  the  question 
proper  to  the  case  seems  to  be.  What  proportions  do  both 
the  large  and  the  small  animals  now  known  bear  to  the 
large  and  small  animals  known  in  the  days  of  Raleigh  or 
Buffon ;  and  how  much  additional  accommodation-room 
would  they  require  during  their  supposed  voyage  of  a 
twelvemonth?     There   are   two   diiferent  ways   in  which 

SPECIES. 

Birds  .......  C2G6 

Reptiles  ......  657 

T»rf'«^  8^ 15 

Sea  Snakes        7  ) 

642 

Great  as  is  this  mimbcr  of  animals,  compared  Avith  those  known  a  cen- 
tury ago,  there  are  indications  that  the  list  is  to  be  increased  ratlier  than 
diminished.  Even  by  the  latest  European  authorities  the  reindeer  is 
represented  as  consisting  of  but  a  single  species,  common  to  the  subarctic 
regions  of  both  the  Old  and  New  Worlds;  whereas  in  the  "Canadian 
Naturalist"  for  18')6  I  find  it  stated,  on  what  tceins  to  be  competent 
authority,  that  America  has  its  two  species  of  reindeer,  and  that  they 
both  differ  from  the  European  species. 


340  THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE. 

the  list  of  the  known  animals  has  been  increased,  especially 
of  the  known  mammals.  They  have  been  increased  in  a 
certain  appreciable  proportion  by  discovery  ,•  and  as  dis- 
covery has  been  made  chiefly  in  islands,  —  for  the  great 
continents  had  been  previously  known,  —  and  as  the  mam- 
mals of  islands,  as  has  been  well  remarked  by  Cuvier,  are 
usually  small,  of  this  appreciable  proportion  the  bulk  is 
comparatively  not  great.  The  great  kangaroo  {Macropus 
ffiffanieus),  though  the  inhabitant  of  an  island  which  ranks 
among  the  continents,  would  not  much  exceed  in  bulk, 
tried  by  Raleigh's  quamt  scale  of  measurement,  a  sheep 
und  a  half,  or  at  most  two  sheep ;  and  yet  I  know  not  that 
discovery  in  the  islands  has  added  a  larger  animal  to  the 
previously  known  ones  than  the  great  kangaroo.  Mr. 
Waterhouse,  when  he  published,  in  1841,  his  "History 
of  the  Marsupialia,"  reckoned  up  one  hundred  and  five 
distinct  species  of  pouched  animals ;  and  eighteen  species 
more,  —  in  all  one  hundred  and  twenty-three,  —  have  been 
since  added  to  the  order.  With  the  exception  of  an  opos- 
sum or  two,  all  these  marsupiata  may  be  regarded  as 
discoveries  made  since  the  time  of  Buffbn ;  most  of  them, 
as  I  have  said,  are  small.  And  such,  generally,  has  been 
the  nature  of  the  revelations  made  during  the  last  seventy 
years  by  positive  discover^/.  It  is  not,  however,  by  dis- 
covery, but  by  scientific  scrutiny  into  the  true  nature  and 
distinctions  of  species,  that  the  recent  enormous  increase  in 
the  number  of  the  known  mammals  has  mainly  taken  place. 
And  in  these  cases  it  will  generally  be  found  that  the  new 
species,  which  had  been  previously  confounded  with  some 
o'.d  ones,  bo  nearly  resemble  the  latter  in  bulk,  as  well  as 
aspe^,  as  to  justify  in  some  degree  the  mistake.  Let  us 
take  two  of  the  greatest  animals  as  examples, — the  elephant 
and  the  rhinoceros.  Buff'on  confounded  the  African  with 
the  Asiatic  elephant.     We  now  know  that  they  represent 


THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE.  341 

two  AvoU  marked  species,  Elephas  Africanus  and  Elephas 
Indicus ;  and  that  an  ark  whicli  contained  the  ancestors  of 
all  the  existing  animals  would  require  to  have  its  txno  pair 
of  elephants,  not  the  one  pair  only  which  would  have  been 
deemed  sufficient  eighty  years  ago.  Again,  with  respect 
to  the  rhinoceros,  Buffon  was  acquainted  with  the  single 
horned  animal,  and  had  Jieard  of  the  animal  with  two 
horns ;  and  so,  though  by  no  means  certain  that  the 
'■'"variety  was  constant,"  he  yet  held  that  "two  distinct 
species  might  possibly  be  established."  But  we  now  know 
that  there  are  six  species  of  rhinoceros  (seven,  according  to 
the  ''  Physical  Atlas,")  —  JRh.  Indicus,  Hh.  Javamis,  JRIi. 
Sumatrensis,  Jih.  Africanus,  JRh.  shnus,  and  Rh.  ketloaj 
and  that,  instead  oi  possibly  four,  at  least  twelve,  or  more 
probably  fourteen,  animals  of  the  genus  Avould  require,  on 
the  hypothesis  of  a  universal  deluge,  to  have  been  accom- 
modated in  the  ark.  Buffon  even  held  that  the  bison  of 
America  miglit  be  identical  with  not  simply  the  auroch  of 
Europe,  which  it  closely  resembles,  but  with  even  the 
European  ox,  which  it  does  not  resemble.  But  it  is  now 
known,  that  while,  the  European  aurochs  are  provided  by 
nature  with  but  fourteen  pairs  of  ribs,  the  American  bison 
is  furnished  with  fifteen.  Of  each  of  the  ruminants  that 
divide  the  hoof,  there  Avere  seven  introduced  into  the  ark ; 
and  it  may  be  well  to  mark  how,  even  during  the  last  few 
yeai-s,  our  acquaintance  with  this  order  of  animals  has  been 
growing,  and  how  greatly  the  known  species,  in  their  rela- 
tion to  human  knowledge,  have  in  consequence  increased. 
In  1848  (in  the  first  edition  of  the  "Physical  Atlas")  Mr. 
Waterhouse  estimated  the  oxen  at  thirteen  species;  in  1856 
(in  the  second  edition)  he  estimates  them  at  twenty.  In 
1848  he  estimated  the  sheep  at  twenty-one  species;  in  1856 
he  estimates  them  at  twenty-seven.  In  1848  he  estimated 
the  goats  at  fourteen  species;  in  1856  he  estimates  them 
29* 


3<2  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

at  twenty.  In  1846  he  estimated  the  deer  at  thirty-eight 
species;  in  1856  he  estimates  them  at  fifty-one.  In  short, 
if,  excluding  the  lamas  and  the  musks  as  doubtfully  clean, 
tried  by  the  Mosaic  test,  we  but  add  to  the  sheep,  goats, 
deer,  and  cattle,  the  forty-eight  species  of  unequivocally 
clean  antelopes,  and  multiply  the  whole  by  seven,  we  shall 
have  as  the  result  a  sum  total  of  one  thousand  one  hundred 
and  sixty-two  individuals, — a  number  more  than  four  times 
greater  than  that  for  which  Raleigh  made  provision  in  the 
ark,  and  considerably  more  than  tAvice  greater  than  that 
provided  for  by  the  students  of  Buffon.  Such  is  the  nature 
and  amount  of  the  increase  which  has  taken  place  during 
the  last  half  century  in  the  mammaliferous  fauna.  In  so 
great  a  majority  of  cases  has  it  increased  its  hulk  in  the 
ratio  in  which  it  has  increased  its  numbers,  that  if  one  ai"k 
was  not  deemed  more  than  sufficient  to  accommodate  the 
animal  world  known  to  the  French  naturalist  of  eighty 
years  ago,  it  would  require  at  least  from  five  to  six  arks 
to  accommodate  the  animal  world  known  in  the  present 
day. 

Even  in  the  days  of  Buffon,  however,  and  at  a  still  earlier 
period,  the  ark,  regarded  as  a  natural  means  of  preservation 
from  death  by  droicning,  was  iisually  coupled,  in  the  case 
of  at  least  the  carnivorous  animals,  with  certain  miraculous 
provisions  against  death  by  starving.  It  seems  to  have 
been  generally  taken  for  granted,  that  the  flesh-eating 
animals,  when  introduced  to  the  shelter  of  the  ark,  entirely 
changed  the  nature  indicated  by  their  form  of  teeth,  the 
character  of  their  stomachs,  and  the  shortness  of  their 
bowels,  and  fed,  for  the  time  they  remained  in  it,  exclu- 
sively on  vegetable  substances,  which,  in  ordinary  circum- 
stances, their  lacteals  could  not  have  converted  into  chyle. 
Certain  figurative  expressions  in  Scripture  taken  literally, 
which  refer  to  a  class  of  wild  animals  whose  real  destiny  is 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  343 

rather,  it  would  seem,  to  be  extirpated  than  tc  be  changed, 
coupled  with  the  belief,  wow  no  longer  tenablCf  tnat  there 
was  a  time,  ere  man  had  siniied,  Avhen  there  w-as  no  death 
among  tin;  inferior  creatures,  3nd  of  course  no  eaters  of 
flesh,  rendered  the  belief  easy  of  reception  ;  but  it  involved 
a  miracle  nowhere  recorded;  and  the  burden  of  the  proof 
that  such  a  miracle  actually  took  place  in  the  circumstances 
lies  of  necessity  on  the  assertors  of  a  universal  deluge. 
Further,  of  even  the  creatures  tliat  live  on  vegetables, 
many  are  restricted  in  their  food  to  single  plants,  which 
are  themselves  restricted  to  limited  localities  and  remote 
regions  of  the  globe.  Dr.  Hamilton  has  not  referred,  in 
his  list  of  animals,  to  the  insects,  —  a  class  which,  though 
they  were  estimated  in  1842  to  consist  of  no  fewer  than 
five  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  species,  might  yet  be 
accommodated  in  a  comparatively  limited  space.  But  how 
extraordinary  an  amount  of  miracle  would  it  not  require  to 
bring  them  all  together  into  any  one  centre,  or  to  preserve 
them  there !  Many  of  them,  like  the  myriapoda  and  the 
thysanura,  have  no  wings,  and  but  feeble  locomotive 
powers ;  many  of  them,  such  as  the  ephemera  and  the 
male  ants,  live  after  they  have  got  their  wings  only  a  few 
hours,  or  at  most  a  few"  days ;  and  there  are  myriads  of 
them  that  can  live  upon  but  single  plants  that  grow  in  very 
limited  botanic  centres.  Even  sup[)osing  them  all  brought 
into  the  ark  by  miracle  as  eggs,  Avhat  multitudes  of  them 
would  not,  Avithout  the  exertion  of  further  miracle,  require 
to  be  sent  back  to  their  proper  habitats  as  wingless  grubs, 
or  as  insects  restricted  by  nature  to  a  few  days  of  life ! 
Oi",  supposing  the  eggs  all  left  in  their  several  localities  to 
lie  under  water  for  a  twelvemonth  amid  mud  and  debris, — 
though  certain  of  the  hardier  kinds  might  survive  such 
treatment,  by  miracle  alone  could  the  preponderating  ma- 
jority of  the  class  be  preserved.     And  be  it  remembered, 


34-4  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

that  the  expedient  of  having  recourse  to  sxipposititious 
miracle  in  order  to  get  over  a  difficulty  insurmountable  on 
every  natural  principle,  is  not  of  the  nature  of  ai-gument, 
but  simply  an  evidence  of  the  want  of  it.  Argument  is  at 
an  end  when  supposititious  miracle  is  introduced. 

But  the  very  inadequate  size  of  the  ark,  though  a  con- 
clusive proof  that  all,  or  nearly  all,  the  jDrogenitors  of  our 
existing  animals  could  not  have  harbored  Avithin  it  from 
anv  general  cataclysm,  does  not  furnish  a  stroncrer  aro-u- 
ment  against  the  possibility  of  any  such  assemblage,  than 
the  peculiar  manner  in  which  we  now  find  these  animals 
distributed  over  the  earth's  surface.  Linnseus  held,  early 
in  the  last  century,  that  all  creatures  M'hich  now  inhabit  the 
globe  had  proceeded  originally  from  some  such  common 
centre  as  the  ark  might  have  furnished ;  but  no  zoologist 
acquainted  with  the  distribution  of  species  can  acquiesce 
in  any  such  conclusion  now.  We  now  know  that  every 
great  continent  has  its  own  peculiar  fauna ;  that  the  origi- 
nal centres  of  distribution  must  have  been,  not  one,  but 
many ;  further,  that  the  areas  or  circles  around  these  cen- 
tres must  have  been  occupied  by  their  pristine  animals  in 
ages  long  anterior  to  that  of  the  Noachian  Deluge ;  nay, 
that  in  even  the  latter  geologic  ages,  they  were  preceded 
in  them  by  animals  of  the  same  general  type.  There  are 
foui'teen  such  areas  or  provinces  enumerated  by  the  later 
naturalists.  It  may  be  well,  however,  instead  of  running 
any  risk  of  losing  ourselves  amid  the  less  nicely  defined 
provinces  of  the  Old  World,  to  draw  our  illustrations  from 
tAvo  and  a  half  provinces  of  later  discovery,  whose  limits 
have  been  rigidly  fixed  by  nature.  "  The  great  conti- 
nents," says  Cuvier,  "  contain  species  peculiar  to  each ;  in- 
somuch that  Avhenever  large  countries  of  this  description 
have  been  discovered,  which  their  situation  had  kept  iso- 
lated from  the  rest  of  the  world,  the  class  of  quadrupeds 


THE    N  O  A  (J  H  I  A  N    D  E  L  U  G  Ji .  345 

which  they  cont:iined  has  been  found  extremely  different 
from  any  that  had  existed  elsewhere.     Thus,  when  the  Span- 
iards first  penetrated  into  South  America,  they  did  not  find 
a  single  species  of  quadruped  the  same  as  any  of  Europe, 
Asia,  or  Africa.      The   i)umn,  the  jaguar,    the   tapir,   the 
cabiai,  the   lama,  the  vicuna,  the  sloths,  the   armadilloes, 
the  opossums,  and   the  whole   tribe  of  sapajous,  wore  to 
them   entirely  new  animals,  of  which   they  had    no  idea. 
Similar  circumstances  have  recurred  in  our  own  time,  Avhen 
the  coasts  of  New  Holland  and  the  adjacent  islands  were 
first  explored.     The  various  species  of  kangaroo,  phasco- 
lomys,  dasyurus,  and  perameles,  the  flying  jjlialangers,  the 
ornithorynchi,  and  echidnas,  have  astonished  naturalists  by 
the  strangeness  of  their  conformations,  which    presented 
proportions  contrary  to  all   former   rules,  and   nere   inca- 
pable of  being  arranged  under  any   of  the   systems  then 
in  use."     New  Zealand,  though  singularly  devoid  of  indig- 
enous mammals  and  reptiles,  —  for  the  only  native  mam- 
mal seems  to  be  a   peculiar  species  of  rat,  and  the  only 
native  reptile  a  small,  harmless  lizard,  —  has  a  scarce  less 
remarkable   fauna  than    either  of  these   great  continents. 
It  consists  almost  exclusively  of  birds,  some  of  them  so  ill 
provided  with  wings,  that,  like  the  wika  of  the  natives, 
they  can  only  run  along  the  ground.      And  it  is  a  most 
significant  fact,  that  both  in  the  two  great  continents  and 
the  New  Zealand  islands  there  existed,  in  the  later  geo- 
logic ages,  extinct   faunas  that  bore  the  peculiar  geneiio 
characters    by   which    their    recent    ones    are    still    distin- 
o-uished.      The   sloths  and  armadilloes  of  South  America 
had   their  gigantic   predecessors   in   the  enormous   mega- 
therium and  mylodon,  and  the  strongly  armed  glyptodon ; 
the  kaniraroos  and  wombats  of  Australia  had  tnc-ir  extinct 
predecessors   in  a  kangaroo  nearly  twice  the  size  of  the 
largest  living  species,  and  in  so  huge  a  Avombat,  that  its 


346 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 


bones  have  been  mistaken  for  those  of  the  hippopotamus  •, 
and  the  ornithic  inhabitants  of  New  Zealand  had  their 

Fig.  112. 


SIYLODON    ROBOSTUS. 


Fig  113. 


GLTPTODON    CLAVIPES. 


predecessors  in  the  monstrous  birds,  such  as  the  dinomis, 
the  aptornis,  and  the  palapteryx,  —  wingless  creatures  like 


THE  NOACHIAN  DELUGE.         347 

the  ostrich,  that  stood  from  six  to  twelve  feet  in  height. 
In  these  several  regions  two  (/enerations  of  species  of  the 
genera  peciiUar  to  them  have  existed,  —  the  recent  genei.a- 
tion  by  whose  descendants  they  are  still  inhabited,  and  the 
extinct  gigantic  generation,  whose  remains  we  find  locked 
up  m  their  soils  and  caves.  But  how  are  such  facts  rec- 
oncileable  with  the  hypothesis  of  a  imivei'sal  deluge  ? 

The  deluge  was  an  event  of  the  existing  creation.     Had 
it  been  universal,  it  Avould  either  have  broken  up  all  the 
diverse  centres,  and  substituted  one  great  general  centre 
instead,  —  that   in  which  the  ark   rested;    or  else,  at  an 
enormous  expense  of  miracle,  all  the  animals  i)reserved  by 
natural  means  by  Noah  would  have  had  to  be  returned  by 
%upematural  means  to  the  regions  whence  bymeans  equally 
supernatural  tliey   had   been    brought.      The   sloths   and 
armadilloes, — little  fitted  by  nature  for  long  journeys, — '■ 
would  have  required  to  be  ferried  across  the  Atlantic  to  the 
regions   in  which   the   remains   of  the   megatherium   and 
glyptodon  lie  entombed  ;  the  kangaroo  and  wombat,  to  tlie 
insulated  continent  that  contains  the  bones  of  the  extinct 
macropus  and  phalcolomys ;  and  the  New  Zealand  birds, 
including  its  heavy  flying  quails  and  its  Avingless  wood-hen, 
to  those  remote  islands  of  the  Pacific  in  which  the  skele- 
tons of  Palapteryx   ingens   and  Dinormcs  giganteus  lie 
entombed.     Nor  will  it  avail  aught  to  urge,  with  certain 
assertors  of  a  universal  deluge,  that  during  the  cataclysm, 
sea  and  land  changed  their  places,  and  that  what  is  now 
land  had  formed  the  bottom  of  the  antediluvian  ocean,  and, 
vice  versa,  what  is  now  sea  had  been  the  land  on  which  the 
first  human  inhabitants  of  the  earth  increased  and  multi- 
plied.    No  geologist  Avho  knows  how  very  various  the  ages 
of  the  several  table-lands  and  mountain  chains  in  reality  are 
could  acquiesce  in   such   an  hypothesis ;  our  own  Scottish 
shores,  —  if  to  the  term  of  the  existing  we  add  that  of  the 


348  THE    NOACHIAX    DELUGE. 

ancient  coast  line,  —  must  have  formed  the  limits  of  the 
land  from  a  time  vastly  more  remote  than  the  age  of  the 
deluge.  But  even  supposing,  for  the  argument's  sake,  the 
hypothesis  recognized  as  admissible,  Avhat,  in  the  circum- 
stances of  the  case,  would  be  gained  by  the  admission  ?  A 
contimious  tract  of  land  would  have  stretched,  —  when  all 
the  oceans  were  continents  and  all  the  continents  oceans, — 
between  the  South  American  and  the  Asiatic  coasts.  And 
it  is  just  possible  that,  during  the  hundred  and  twenty 
years  in  which  the  ark  was  in  building,  a  pair  of  sloths 
might  have  crept  by  inches  across  this  continuous  tract, 
from  where  the  skeletons  of  the  great  megatheria  are 
buried,  to  Avhere  the  great  vessel  stood.  But  after  the 
Flood  had  subsided,  and  the  change  in  sea  and  land  had 
taken  place,  there  would  remain  for  them  no  longer  a  road- 
way ;  and  so,  though  their  journey  outwards  might,  in  all 
save  the  impulse  which  led  to  it,  have  been  altogether  a 
natural  one,  their  voyage  homewards  could  not  be  other 
than  miraculous.  Nor  would  the  exertion  of  miracle  have 
had  to  be  restricted  to  the  transport  of  the  remoter  travel- 
lers. How,  we  may  well  ask,  had  the  Flood  been  universal, 
could  even  such  islands  as  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  have 
ever  been  replenished  with  many  of  their  original  inhabit- 
ants ?  Even  supposing  it  possible  that  animals,  such  as  the 
red  deer  and  the  native  ox  might  have  swam  across  the 
Straits  of  Dover  or  the  Irish  Channel,  to  graze  anew  over 
deposits  in  which  the  bones  and  horns  of  their  remote 
ancestors  had  been  entombed  long  ages  before,  the  feat 
would  have  been  surely  far  beyond  the  power  of  such  feeble 
natives  of  the  soil  as  the  mole,  the  hedgehog,  the  shrew, 
the  dormouse,  and  the  field-vole. 

I)i-.  Pye  Smitli,  in  dealing  with  this  subject,  has  emphati- 
cally said,  that  *'  all  land  animals  having  their  geographical 
regions,  to  wliich  their  constitutional  natures  are  congenial, 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE,  349 


- — many  of  tlicm  being  unable  to  live  in  any  other  situation, 
' — Ave  cannot  represent  to  ourselves  the  idea  of  their  being 
brought  into  one  small  spot  from  the  polar  regions,  the 
torrid  zone,  and  all  the  other  climates  of  Asia,  Africa, 
Europe,  and  America,  Australia,  and  the  thousands  of 
islands,  —  their  preservation  and  provision,  and  the  final 
disposal  of  them,  —  without  bringing  up  the  idea  of  miracles 
more  stupendous  than  any  that  are  recorded  in  Scripture. 
The  great  decisive  miracle  of  Christianity,"  he  adds,  —  "the 
resurrection  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  —  sinks  down  before  it." 
And  let  us  remember  that  the  preservation  and  redistribu- 
tion of  the  land  animals  would  demand  but  a  portion  of  the 
amount  of  miracle  absolutely  necessary  for  the  preservation, 
hi  the  circumstances,  of  the  entire  faima  of  the  globe.  The 
fresh  water  fishes,  molluscs,  Crustacea,  and  zooi^hytes,  could 
be  kept  alive  in  a  universal  deluge  only  by  miraculous 
means.  It  has  been  urged  that,  though  the  living  individ- 
uals were  to  j^erish,  their  spawn  might  be  preserved  by 
natural  means.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that 
even  of  some  fishes  whose  proper  habitat  is  the  sea,  such  as 
the  salmon,  it  is  essential  for  the  maintenance  of  the  species 
that  the  spaAvn  shoidd  be  deposited  in  fresh  water,  nay,  in 
running  fresh  Avater ;  for  in  still  water,  however  pure,  the 
^eggs  in  a  few  weeks  addle  and  die.  The  eggs  of  the  com- 
mon trout  also  require  to  be  deposited  in  running  fresh 
water ;  while  other  fresh  water  fishes,  such  as  the  tench  and 
carp,  are  reared  most  successfully  in  still,  reedy  ponds. 
The  fresh  water  fishes  spawn,  too,  at  very  different  seasons, 
and  the  young  remain  for  very  different  periods  in  the  ogg. 
The  perch  and  grayling  spaMn  in  the  end  of  April  or  the 
beginning  of  May ;  the  tench  and  roach  about  the  middle 
of  June ;  the  common  trout  and  powan  in  October  and 
November.  And  while  some  fishes,  such  as  the  salmon, 
remain  from  ninety  to  a  hundred  days  in  the  egg,  others, 
30 


c. 


350         THE  NOACHIAN  DELUGE. 

such  as  the  troxit,  are  extruded  iu  five  weeks.  Without 
special  miracle  the  spaAvn  of  all  the  fresh  water  fishes  could 
not  be  in  existence  as  such  at  one  and  the  same  time ; 
without  special  miracle  it  could  not  maintain  its  vitality  iu 
a  universal  deluge ;  and  without  special  miracle,  even  did  it 
maintain  its  vitalitv,  it  could  not  remain  in  the  egsr  state 
throughout  an  entire  twelvemonth,  but  would  be  developed 
into  fishes  of  the  several  species  to  which  it  belonged  at 
very  difterent  periods.  Further,  in  a  xmiversal  deluge, 
Avithout  special  miracle  vast  numbers  of  even  the  salt  water 
animals  could  not  fail  to  be  extirpated ;  in  particular,  almost 
all  the  molluscs  of  the  littoral  and  laminarian  zones.  Nor 
Avould  the  vegetable  kingdom  fare  greatly  better  than  the^ 
animal  one.  Of  the  one  hundred  thousand  species  of  known 
plants,  few  indeed  would  survive  submersion  for  a  twelve- 
month ;  nor  Avould  the  seeds  of  most  of  the  others  fare 
better  than  the  plants  themselves.  There  are  certain  hardy 
seeds  that  in  fovorable  circumstances  maintain  their  vitality 
for  ages ;  and  there  are  others,  strongly  encased  in  water- 
tight shells  or  skins,  that  have  floated  across  oceans  to  ger- 
minate iu  distant  islands ;  but  such,  as  every  florist  knows, 
is  not  the  general  character  of  seeds ;  and  not  until  after 
many  unsuccessful  attempts,  and  many  expedients  had  been 
resorted  to,  have  the  more  delicate  kinds  been  brought 
uninjured,  even  on  shipboai'd,  from  distant  countries  to  our 
own.  It  is  not  too  much  to  hold  that,  without  special 
miracle,  at  least  three  fourths  of  the  terrestrial  vegetation 
of  the  globe  would  have  perished  in  a  universal  deluge  that 
covered  over  the  dry  land  for  a  year.  Assuredly  the  vai-i- 
ous  vegetable  centres  or  regions,  —  estimated  by  Schouw 
at  twenty-five,  —  bear  witness  to  no  such  catastrophe. 
Still  distinct  and  unbroken,  as  of  old,  either  no  efiacing 
flood  has  passed  o  /er  them,  or  they  Avere  shielded  from  its 
eflfects  at  an  expsnse  of  miracle  many  times  more  consider- 


V 


THE    NO  A  CHI  AN    DELUGE.  3ol 

able  tlian  tlint  at  Avhich  the  Jews  were  hrought  out  of 
Egypt  and  preserved  amid  tlie  nations,  or  Christianity 
itself  was  ixltimately  establislied.* 

There  is,  however,  a  class  of  learned  and  thoroughly 
respectable  theologians  who  seem  disposed  to  accept  rather 
of  any  amount  of  unrecorded  miracle,  than  to  admit  of 
a  merely  partial  deluge,  coextensive  with  but  the  human 
family.  "  Were  the  difficulty  attending  this  subject  tenfold 
greater,  and  seemingly  beyond  all  satisfactory  explanation," 
says  Dr.  William  Hamilton,  "  if  I  yet  find  it  recorded  in  the 
Book  of  Revelation,  that  in  the  deluge  '  every  living  thing 
in  v)hich  is  the  breath  of  life  perished^  and  Noah  only 
remained  alive^  and  they  v^hich  v^ere  with  him  in  the  ark,'' 
I  could  still  believe  it  implicitly,  satisfied  that  the  difficulty 
of  explanation  springs  solely  from  the  imperfection  of 
human  knowledge,  and  not  from  any  limitation  in  the 
power  or  the  wisdom  of  God,  nor  yet  from  any  lack  of 
trustworthiness  in  the  document  given  us  in  a  revelation 
from  God,  —  a  document  given  to  men  by  the  hands  of 
Moses,  the  learned,  accomplished,  and  eminently  devout 
Jewish  legislator,"  Here  again,  however.  Dr.  Hamilton 
seems  to  have  mistaken  the  question  actually  at  issue.  The 
true  question  is,  not  Avhether  or  no  Moses  is  to  be  believed 
in  the  matter,  1but  whether  or  no  we  in  reality  understand 
Moses.  The  question  is, 'whether  we  are  to  regard  the  pas- 
sages  in  A\hicli   he   describes   the   Flood  as   universal,  as 

*  If  I  do  not  introduce  here  the  argument  founded  on  the  great  age  of 
certain  gigantic  trees,  such  as  the  Baobab  of  intertropical  Africa,  or  the 
Taxodium  of  South  America,  it  is  not  because  I  liave  any  reason  to  chal- 
lenge the  estimates  of  Adanson  or  Candolle.  The  one  tree  may  have 
lived  its  five  thousand,  tlic  otiicr  its  six  tliousand,  years  ;  but  as  the 
grounds  liave  been  disputed  on  which  the  calculations  respecting  their 
vast  age  have  been  founded,  and  as  they  cannot  be  reexamined  anew  by 
the  reader,  I  wholly  omit  the  evidence,  in  the  general  question,  which  they 
have  been  supposed  to  furnish. 


3o2  THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE. 

belonging  to  the  very  numerous  metonymicTexls~bf  Scrip- 
ture i^n  -wJiich  a  part  —  sometimes  a  not  very  lajge  part- 
is described  as  the  whole,  or  to  regard  them  as  strictly  and 
severely  literal.  Or,  in  other  words,  whether  we  are,  Avith 
learned  and  solid  divines  of  the  olden  time,  such  as  Poole 
and  Stillingfleet,  and  with  many  ingenioiis  and  accomplished 
divines  of  the  passing  age,  sucli  as  the  late  Dr.  Pye  Smith 
and  the  Rev.  Professor  Hitchcock,  to  regard  these  passages 
as  merely  metonymic ;  or,  with  Drs.  Hamilton  and  Kitto,  to 
regard  them  as  strictly  literal,  and  to  call  up  in  support  of 
the  literal  reading  an  amount  of  supposititious  miracle, 
compared  with  which  all  the  recorded  miracles  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments  sink  into  insigniticance.  The  con- 
troversy does  not  lie  between  Moses  and  the  naturalists, 
but  between  the  readings  of  theologians  such  as  Matthew 
Poole  and  Stillingfleet  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  readbigs 
of  theologians  such  as  Drs.  Hamilton  and  Kitto  on  the 
other.  And  finding  all  natural  science  arrayed  against  the 
conclusions  of  the  one  class,  and  in  favor  of  those  of  the 
other,  and  believing,  further,  that  there  has  been  always 
such  a  marked  economy  shown  in  the  exercise  of  miracu- 
lous powers,  that  there  has  never  been  more  of  miracle 
employed  in  any  one  of  the  dispensations  than  was  needed,* 
I  must  hold  that  the  theologians  mIio  believe  that  the 
deluge  was  but  coextensive  with  the  moral  purpose  which 

*  Tlie  following  excellent  remarks  on  the  economy  of  miracle,  by 
Chalmers,  l)ear  very  directly  on  this  subject :  —  "It  is  remarkable  that  God 
is  sparing  of  miracles,  and  seems  to  prefer  the  ordinary  processes  of  nature, 
if  equally  effectual  for  the  accomplishment  of  his  purposes.  He  might 
have  saved  Noah  and  his  family  by  miracles;  but  he  is  not  prodigal  of 
these,  and  so  he  appointed  that  an  ark  should  be  made  to  bear  up  the 
living  cargo  which  was  to  be  kept  alive  on  the  surface  of  the  waters;  and 
not  only  so,  but  he  respects  the  laws  of  the  animal  physiology,  as  he  did 
those  of  hydrostatics,  in  that  he  put  them  by  pairs  into  the  ark,  male  and 
female,  to  secure  their  transmission  to  after  ages,  and  food  was  stored  up 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  353 

it  served  are  more  in  the  right,  and  may  be  more  safely 
followed,  than  the  theologians  who  hold  that  it  extended 
greatly  fnrthcr  than  was  necessary.  It  is  not  with  Moses 
or  the  truth  of  revelation  that  our  controversy  lies,  but 
with  the  opponents  of  Stilliugflect  and  of  Poole. 

To  only  one  of  the  other  arguments  employed  in  this 
controversy  need  I  at  all  refer.  The  cones  of  volcanic 
craters  ai'e  formed  of  loose  incoherent  scoriaa  and  ashes, 
and,  when  exposed,  as  in  the  case  of  submarine  volcanoes, 
such  as  Graham's  Island  and  the  islands  of  Nyoe  and  Sa- 
brina,  to  the  denuding  force  of  waves  and  currents,  they 
liave  in  a  few  weeks,  or  at  most  a  few  months,  been  washed 
completely  away.  And  yet  in  various  parts  of  the  world, 
IS  Auvergne  in  central  France,  and  along  the  flanks 
of  ^tna,  there  arc  cones  of  long  extinct  or  long  slumber- 
ing volcanoes,  which,  though  of  at  least  triple  the  antiquity 
of  the  Noachian  deluge,  and  though  composed  of  the  ordi- 
nary incoherent  materials,  exhibit  no  marks  of  denudation. 
According  to  the  calculations  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  no  dev- 
astating flood  could  have  passed  over  the  forest  zone  of 
-^tna  during  the  last  twelve  thousand  years, —for  such  is 
the  antiquity  which  he  assigns  to  its  older  lateral  cones, 
that  retain  in  integrity  their  original  shape ;  and  the  vol- 
canic cones  of  Auvergne,  which  inclose  in  their  ashes  the 
remains  of  extinct  animals,  and  present  an  outline  as  per- 
fect as  those  of  ^tna,  are  deemed  older  still.  Graham 
Island  arose  out  of  the  sea  early  in  July,  1831 ;  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  following  August  it  had  attained  to  a  cir- 
cumference of  three  miles,  and  to  a  height  of  two  hundred 

to  sustain  them  during  their  long  confinement.  In  short,  he  dispenses 
with  miracles  when  these  are  not  requisite  for  the  fulfilment  of  his  ends; 
and  he  never  dispenses  with  the  ordin.aiy  means  when  these  arc  fitted, 
and  at  the  same  time  sufficient,  for  the  occasion."  —  Daily  Scripture  Mead- 
ings,  vol.  i.  p.  10. 

30* 


354  THE    iSfOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

feet ;  and  yet  in  les?;  than  three  months  from  that  time 
the  waves  had  washed  its  immense  mass  down  to  the  sea 
level ;  and  in  a  few  weeks  more  it  existed  but  as  a  dan- 
gerous shoal.  And  such  inevitably  would  have  been  the 
fate  of  the  equally  incoherent  cone-like  craters  of  iEtna 
and  Auvercrne  durinor  the  seven  and  a  half  months  that 
intervened  between  the  breaking  up  of  the  fountains  of 
the  great  deep  and  the  reappearance  of  the  mountain-tops, 
had  they  been  included  within  the  area  of  the  deluge.  It 
is  estimated  that  even  the  newer  Auvergne  lavas  are  as 
old  as  the  times  of  the  Miocene.  It  is  at  least  a  demon- 
strable fact,  that  the  slow  action  of  streams  had  hollowed 
them  in  several  places  into  deep  chasms  nearly  two  thou- 
sand years  ago;  for  the  remains  of  Roman  works  of 
about  that  age  survive,  to  show  that  they  had  then,  as 
now,  to  be  spanned  over  by  bridges,  and  that  baths  had 
been  erected  in  their  denuded  recesses ;  and  yet  the  craters 
out  of  which  these  lavas  Iiad  flowed  retain  well  nigh  all 
their  original  sharpness  of  outline.  No  wave  ever  dashed 
against  their  symmetrically  sloping  sides.  Now,  I  have  in 
no  instance  seen  the  argument  derivable  from  this  class  of 
facts  feirly  met.  The  supposed  mistake  of  the  Canonico 
Recupero,  or  rather  of  Brydone,  who  argued  that  the 
•'  lowest  of  a  series  of  seven  distinct  lavas  of  ^tna,  most 
of  them  covered  by  thick  intervening  beds  of  rich  earth, 
must  have  been  fourteen  thousand  years  old,"  has  been 
often  referred  to  in  the  controversy.  Brydone  or  the 
Canon  mistook,  it  has  been  said,  beds  of  brown  ashes, 
each  of  which  might  have -been  deposited  during  a  single 
shower,  for  beds  of  rich  earth,  each  of  which  would  have 
taken  centuries  to  form.  The  oldest  of  the  series  of  lava 
beds,  therefore,  instead  of  being  fourteen  thousand,  might 
be  scarce  fourteen  hundred  years  old.  And  if  Brydone 
(»r  the  Canon  were  thus  mistaken  in  their  calculations,  why 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  355 

may  not  the  modern  geologists  be  also  mistaken  in  theirs  ? 
Now,  altogether  waiving  the  question  as  to  Avhether  the 
ingenious  traveller  of  eighty-six  years  ago  Avas  or  was  not 
mistaken  in  his  estimate, — for  to  those  acquainted  with  ge- 
ologic fact  in  general,  or  more  particularly  M'ith  the  elabo- 
rate descrijitions  of  iEtna  given  during  the  last  thirty  years 
by  Elie  de  Beaumont,  Hoffmann,  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  the 
facts  of  Brydone  in  their  bearing  on  either  the  age  of  the 
earth  or  the  age  of  tlie  mountain,  can  well  be  spared, — 
waiving,  I  say,  the  question  whether  the  traveller  was  in 
reality  in  mistake,  I  must  be  permitted  to  remark,  that 
the  concurrent  testimony  of  geologists  cannot  in  fairness 
be  placed  on  the  same  level  as  the  testimony  of  a  man 
who,  though  accomplished  and  intelligent,  was  not  only 
no  geologist,  but  who  observed  and  described  ere  geol- 
ogy had  any  existence  as  a  science.  Further,  I  must  be 
allowed  to  add,  that  geology  w  now  a  science ;  and  that 
individuals  unacquainted  with  it  in  its  diaracter  as  such 
place  themselves  in  positions  greatly  more  perilous  than 
they  seem  to  think,  when  they  enter  on  the  field  of  argu- 
ment A\ith  men  Avho  for  many  years  have  made  it  a  sub- 
ject of  special  study.  It  is  not  by  "bidding  down"  the 
age  of  the  extinct  or  quiescent  volcanoes  by  a  species  of 
blind  haggling,  or  by  presuming  mistake  in  the  calcula- 
tions regarding  them,  simply  because  mistakes  are  possible 
and  have  sometimes  been  made,  that  that  portion  of  the 
cumulative  evidence  against  a  universal  deluge  which  they 
furnish  is  to  be  neutralized  or  set  aside.  The  argiiment  on 
the  general  question  is  a  cumulative  one  ;  and  while  many 
of  its  component  portions  are  of  themselves  so  conclusive, 
that  only  supposititious  miracle,  and  not  presentable  argu- 
ment, can  be  arrayed  against  them,  its  aggregate  force 
seems  wholly  irresistible.  In  jiassing,  however,  from  the 
facts  and  reasonings  that  bear  against  the  hypothesis  of  a 


356  THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE. 

universal  deluge,  to  indicate  in  a  few  sentences  both  the 
possible  mode  in  which  a  merely  partial  flood  might  have 
taken  place,  and  the  probable  extent  of  area  which  it  cov- 
ered, I  shall  have  to  remove  from  very  strong  to  compara- 
tively weak  groimd,  —  from   what    can  be  maintained  as 
argument,  to  what  can  at  best  be  but  oflfered  as  conjecture. 
There  is  a  remarkable  portion  of  the  globe,  chiefly  itx 
the  Asiatic  continent,  though  it  extends  into  Europe,  and 
which  is  nearly  equal  to  all  Europe  in  area,  whose  rivers 
(some  of  them,  such  as  the  Volga,  the  Oural,  the  Sihon, 
the  Kour,  and  the  Amoo,  of  great  size)  do  not  fall  into  the 
ocean,  or  into  any  of  the  many  seas  which  connuunicate 
Avith  it.     They  are,  on  the  contrary,  all  turned  imcards,  if 
I  may  so  express  myself;  losing  themselves,  in  the  eastern 
parts  of  the  tract,  in  the  lakes  of  a  rainless  district,  in 
wliich  they  supply  but  the  Avaste  of  evaporation,  and  fall- 
ing, in  the  western  parts,  into  seas  such  as  the  Caspian  and 
the  Aral.     In  this  region  there  are  extensive  districts  still 
under  the  level  of  the  ocean.      The  shore  line  of  the  Cas- 
pian, for  instance,  is  rather  more  than  eighty-three  feet 
beneath  that  of  the  Black  Sea ;   and  some  of  the  great  flat 
steppes  which  spread  out  around  it,  such  as  what  is  known 
as  the  Steppe  of  Astracan,  have  a  mean  level  of  about 
thirty  feet   beneath  that  of  the  Baltic.      Were  there   a 
trench-like  strip  of  country  that  communicated  between 
the  Caspian  and  the  Gulf  of  Finland  to  be-  depressed  be- 
neath the  level  of  the  latter  sea,  it  Avould  so  open  up  the 
fountains  of  the  great  deep  as  to  lay  under  water  an  exten- 
sive and  populous  region,  containing  the  cities  of  Astracan 
and  Astrabad,  and  many  other  towns  and  villages.     Nor  is 
it  uuAvorthy  of  remark,  surely,  that  one  of  the  depressed 
steppes   of  this   peculiar  region   is   known   as  the  "Low 
Steppe  of  the  Caucasus,"  and  forms  no  inconsiderable  por- 
tion of  the  great  recognized  centre  of  the  human  family. 


THE    NO  AC  II  IAN    DELUGE.  357 

The  Mount  Ararat  on  Avliicli,  according  to  many  of  our 
commentators,  the  ark  rested,  rises  immediately  on  the 
■\vestern  edge  of  tliis  great  hollow  ;  the  Mount  Ararat  se- 
lected as  the  scene  of  that  event  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
certainly  not  without  some  show  of  reason,  lies  far  within 
it.  Vast  plains,  white  with  salt,  and  charged  witli  sea 
shells,  show  that  the  Caspian  Sea  was  at  no  distant  period 
greatly  more  extensive  than  it  is  now.  In  an  outer  region, 
which  includes  the  vast  desert  of  Khiva,  shells  also  abound ; 
but  they  seem  to  belong,  as  a  group,  rather  to  some  of  the 
later  Tertiary  eras  than  to  the  recent  period.  It  is  quite 
possible,  however,  that,  —  as  on  parts  of  the  Avesteru  shores 
of  our  own  country,  where  recent  marine  deposits  lie  over 
marine  deposits  of  the  Pleistocene  age,  while  a  terrestrial 
deposit,  representative  of  an  intervening  paroxysm  of  u[>" 
lieaval,  lies  between,  —  it  is  possible,  I  say,  that  in  this 
great  depressed  area,  the  region  covered  of  old  by  a  Ter- 
tiary sea,  which  we  know  united  the  Sea  of  Aral  with  the 
Caspian,  and  rolled  over  many  a  M'ide  steppe  and  vast  })lain, 
may  have  been  again  covered  for  a  brief  period  (after  ages 
of  upheaval)  by  the  breaking  in  of  the  great  deep  during 
that  season  of  judgment  when,  with  the  exception  of  one 
family,  the  whole  human  race  was  destroyed.  It  seems 
confirmatory  of  this  view,  that  during  even  the  historic 
period,  at  least  one  of  the  neighboring  inland  seas,  though 
it  belongs  to  a  different  system  from  that  of  the  Caspian 
and  the  Aral,  covered  a  vastly  greater  area  than  it  does 
now,  —  a  consequence,  apparently,  of  a  more  considerable 
depression  in  the  Caucasian  region  than  at  present  exists. 
Herodotus,  as  quoted  by  Cuvier  in  his  "  Theory  of  the 
Earth,"  represents  the  Sea  of  AzofF  as  equal  in  extent  to 
the  Euxine. 

With  the  known  facts,  then,  regarding  this  depressed 
Asiatic   region   before  us,  let  us  see  whether  we   cannot 


358         THE  NOACHIAN  DELUGE. 

originate  a  tlieoQ^jof  _lliJ&---©ehrwc-&^_J[hiiH--at--lertst  the 
jx-dpable  iiionstr<>8iti^s-aLjJl£_.Qlde£,  ones.  Let  us  suppose 
that  the  human  family,  still  amounting  to  ,,sei:exaL_iriilliQns, 
though  greatly  reduced  by  exterminating  wars  and  ex- 
hausting "sices,  were  congregatecL-in  -that  tract-of-jCQuntry 
which,  extending  eastwards  from  the  modern  Ararat-to  far 
beyond  the  Sea^of  Aral,  includes  the  original  Caucasian 
centre  of  the  race:  let  us  suppose  that,  the  hour  of  judg- 
ment having  at  length  arrived,  the  land  began  gradually  to 
sink,  as  the  tract  in  the  run  of  Cutch  sank  in  the  year  1819, 
or  as  the  tract  in  the  southern  part  of  North  America, 
known  as  the  "sunk  country,"  sank  in  the  year  1821 :  fur- 
ther, let  us  suppose  that  the  depression  took  place  slowly 
I  and  equably  for  forty  days  together,  at  the  rate  of  about 
\,four  hundred  feet  per  day,  —  a  rate  not  twice  greater  than 
/that  at  wliich  the  tide  rises  in  the  Straits  of  Magellan, 
/  and  which  wouUl  have  rendered  itself  apparent  as  but  a 
/  persistent  inward  flowing  of  the  sea:  let  us  yet  further 
suppose,  that  from  mayhap  some  volcanic  outburst  co- 
incident with  tlie  depression,  and  an  effect  of  the  same 
deep  seated  cause,  the  atmosphere  was  so  affected,  that 
heavy  drenching  rains  continued  to  descend  during  the 
w^hole  time,  and  that,  though  they  could  contribute  but 
little  to  the  actual  volume  of  the  flood,  —  at  most  only 
some  five  or  six  inches  per  day,  —  they  at  least  seemed  to 
constitute  one  of  its  main  causes,  and  added  greatly  to  its 
terrors,  by  swelling  the  rivers,  and  rushing  downwards  in 
torrents  from  the  hills.  The  depression,  wliich,  by  extend- 
ing to  the  Euxine  Sea  and  the  Persian  Gulf  on  the  one 
hand,  and  to  the  Gulf  of  Finland  on  the  other,  would  open 
up  by  three  separate  channels  the  fountains  of  the  great 
deep,  and  which  included,  let  us  suppose,  an  area  of  about 
two  thousand  miles  each  A\ay,  would,  at  the  end  of  the 
fortieth  day,  be  sunk  in  its  centre  to  the  depth  of  sixteen 


THE   NOACHIAN   DELUGE  359 

thousand  feet,  —  a  depth  sufficiently  profound  to  bury  the 
loftiest  mountains  of  the  district ;  and  yet,  having  a  gradient 
of  declination  of  but  sixteen  feet  per  mile,  the  contour  of 
its  hills  and  plains  would  remain  apparently  what  they  had 
been  before,  —  the  doomed  inhabitants  would  see  but  the 
water  rising  along  the  mountain  sides,  and  one  refuge  after 
another  swept  away,  till  the  last  Avitness  of  the  scene  would 
have  perished,  and  the  last  hill-top  Avould  have  disappeared. 
And  when,  after  a  hundred  and  fifty  days  had  come  and 
gone,  the  depressed  hollow  would  have  begun  slowly  to 
rise,  —  and  when,  after  the  fifth  month  had  i:)assed,  the  ark 
would  have  grounded  on  the  summit  of  Moixnt  Ararat,  - — 
all  that  could  have  been  seen  from  the  upper  window  of 
the  vessel  would  be  simply  a  boundless  sea,  roughened  by 
tides,  now  flowing  outwards,  with  a  reversed  course,  towards 
the  distant  ocean,  by  the  three  great  outlets  which,  during 
the  period  of  depression,  had  given  access  to  the  Avaters. 
Noah  would  of  course  see  that  "  the  fountains  of  the  deep 
were  stopped,"  and  "the  Avaterss  returning  from  off  the 
earth  continually;"  but  whether  the  Deluge  had  been 
partial  or  universal,  he  could  neither  see  nor  know.  His 
prospect  in  cither  case  would  have  been  equally  that  de- 
scribed by  the  poet  Bowles :  — 

"The  mighty  ark 
Rests  upon  Ararat ;  but  nought  around 
Its  inmates  can  beliold,  save  o'er  the  expanse 
Of  boundless  waters  the  sun's  orient  orb 
Stretcliing  tlic  hull's  long  shadow,  or  the  moon 
In  silence  through  the  silver-curtained  clouds 
Sailing,  as  she  herself  were  lost  and  left 
In  hollow  loneliness." 

Let  me  further  remark,  that  in  one  important  sense  a 
partial  Flood,  such  as  the  one  of  Avhich  I  have  conceived  as 
adequate  to  the  destruction,  in  an  early  age,  of  the  whole 


360  THE    NOACIIIAN    DELUGE. 

human  foraily,  could  scarce  be  regarded  as  miraculous. 
Several  of  our  first  geologists  hold,  that  some  of  the 
formidable  cataclysms  of  the  remote  past  may  have  been 
occasioned  by  the  sudden  upheaval  of  vast  continents, 
which,  by  displacing  great  bodies  of  water,  and  rolling 
them  outwards  in  the  character  of  enormous  waves,  inun- 
dated wide  regions  elevated  hundreds  of  feet  over  the  sea 
level,  and  strewed  them  over  with  the  rock  boulders,  clays, 
gi-avels,  and  organic  debris  of  deep  sea  bottoms.  And 
these  cataclysms  they  regard  as  perfectly  natural,  though 
of  course  very  unusual,  events.  Nor  would  the  gradual 
depression  of  a  continent,  or,  as  in  the  supposed  case,  of  a 
portion  of  a  continent,  be  in  any  degree  less  natural  than 
the  sudden  upheaval  of  a  continent.  It  would,  on  the 
contrary,  be  much  more  according  to  experience.  Nay, 
were  such  a  depression  and  elevation  of  the  great  Asiatic' 
basin  to  take  place  during  the  coming  twelvemonth  as  that 
of  which  I  have  conceived  as  the  probable  cause  of  the 
Deluge,  though  the  geologists  would  have  to  describe  it  as 
beyond  comparison  the  most  remarkable  oscillation  of  level 
Avhich  had  taken  place  within  the  historic  period,  they 
would  certainly  regard  it  as  no  more  miraculous  than  the 
great  earthquake  of  Lisbon,  or  than  that  exhibition  of  the 
volcanic  forces  which  elevated  the  mountain  of  Jorullo  in  a 
single  night  sixteen  hundred  feet  over  the  j^Iain.  And  why 
have  recourse,  in  speculating  on  the  real  event  of  four 
thousand  years  ago,  to  supposititious  miracle,  if  an  event 
jf  apparently  the  same  kind  would  not  be  regarded  as 
iniraculous  now  ?  May  Ave  not  in  this  matter  take  our 
stand  beside  the  poet,  Avho,  when  recognizing  a  Providence 
in  the  great  Calabrian  earthquake,  and  in  the  overwhelming 
wave  by  Avhich  it  was  accompanied,  pertinently  inquired  of 
the  skeptics,  — 


THE    NOACHIAN    DELUGE.  361 

"  Has  not  God 
Still  wrought  by  means  since  first  he  made  the  world  ? 
Atid  did  he  not  of  old  employ/  his  means 
To  droicn  it  ?    What  is  his  creation  less 
Than  a  capacious  reservoir  of  means, 
Formed  for  his  use,  and  ready  at  his  will  ?" 


/  The  revelation  to  Noah,  which  warned  him  of  a  coming 
C_^  Flood,  and  taught  him  how  to  prepare  lor  it,  was  evidently 
/  nxiraculous  :  the  Flood  itself  may  have  been  purely  provi- 
dential. But  on  this  part  of  the  subject  I  need  not  dwell. 
I  have  accomplished  my  purpose  if  I  have  shown,  as  was 
attempted  of  old  by  divines  such  as  Stillingfleet  and  Poole, 
that  there  "  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  the  deluge  should 
be  extended  beyond  the  occasion  of  it,  which  was  the 
corruption  of  man,"  but,  on  the  contrary,  much  reason 
against  it ;  and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  a  Flood  restricted 
and  partial,  and  yet  suflScient  to  destroy  the  race  in  an 
early  age,  while  still  congregating  in  their  original  centre, 
cannot  be  regarded  as  by  any  means  an  incredible  event. 
The  incredibility  lies  in  the  mere  human  glosses  and  mis- 
interpretations in  which  its  history  has  been  enveloped. 
Divested  of  these,  and  viewed  in  its  connection  with  those 
wonderful  traditions  whicli  still  float  all  over  the  world 
regarding  it,  it  forms,  not  one  of  the  stumbling-blocks,  but 
one  of  the  evidences,  of  our  faith  ;  and  renders  the  exercise 
a  not  unprofitable  one,  when,  according  to  the  poet, — 


"  Bark  through  the  dusk  "^ 

Of  ages  Contemplation  turns  her  view, 
To  mark,  as  from  its  infancy,  the  world 
Peopled  again  from  that  mysterious  shrine 
That  rested  on  the  top  of  Ararat." 

31 


LECTURE  NI:J^TH. 

THE   DISCOVERABLE  AXD   THE  REVEALED. 

It  seems  natural,  nay,  inevitable,  that  false  revelation?, 
which  have  descended  from  remote,  imscientific  ages,  should 
be  committed  to  a  false  science.  Natural  phenomena,  when 
of  an  extraordinary  character,  powerfully  impress  the  un- 
tutored mind.  In  operating,  through  the  curiosity  or  the 
fears  of  men,  upon  that  instinct  of  humanity — never  wholly 
inactive  in  even  the  rudest  state  —  which  cannot  witness 
any  remarkable  effect  Avithout  seeking  to  connect  it  with  its 
producing  cause,  they  excite  into  activity  in  the  search  the 
imaginative  ficulty, — always  of  earlier  development  than  the 
judgment  in  both  peoples  and  individuals,  and  which  never 
fails,  when  so  employed,  to  conduct  to  delusions  and  extrav- 
agances. And  this  state  of  mind  gives  birth  simultaneously 
to  both  false  religion  and  false  science.  Great  tempests, 
inundations,  eclipses,  earthquakes,  thunder  and  lightning, 
famine  and  pestilence,  the  births  of  monsters,  or  the  rare 
visitation  of  strange  fishes  or  wild  animals,  come  all  to  be 
included  in  the  mythologic  domain.  Even  the  untutored 
Indian  "  sees  God  in  clouds,  and  hears  him  in  the  wind." 
And  when  an  order  of  priesthood  springs  up,  a  portion  of 
the  leisure  of  the  class  is  usually  employed  in  speculating 
on  these  phenomena ;  and  to  their  speculations  they  give 
the  form  of  direct  revelation.  Thus  almost  all  the  false 
religions  of  the  old  Avorld  —  not  grafted,  like  Moham- 
medanism, on  the  true  one  —  have  their  pretended  revela- 


THE  DISCOVERABLE  AND   REVEALED,         363 

tions  regarding  the  form,  structure,  and  origin  of  the  earth, 
the  mechanism  of  the  heavens,  the  electric  and  meteoric 
phenomena,  and  even  the  arrangement  of  oceans  and 
continents  on  the  surfoce  of  our  planet. 

The  old  extinct  forms  of  heathenism,  —  Etrurian,  Egyp- 
tian, Phoenician,  and  Babylonian, — had  all  their  cosmogo- 
nies,* In  the  "Nvild  mythology  of  ancient  Scandinavia,  of 
which  we  find  such  distinct  traces  in  the  languages  and 
superstitions  of  northern  Europe,  and  which  even  in  our 
own  country  continues  to  give  the  names  of  its  uncouth 
deities  to  the  days  of  our  week,  there  is  a  strange  genesis 
of  not  only  the  heavens  and  earth,  but  of  the  gods  also.  It 
has,  besides,  its  scheme  of  the  universe  in  its  great  mundane 
tree  of  three  vast  roots,  —  celestial,  terrestrial,  and  infernal, 
—  which  supports  the  land,  the  sea,  the  sky,  and  all  things. 
The  leading  religions  of  the  East  which  still  survive,  such  as 
Buddhism,  Brahminism,  and  Parseeism,  have  all  their 
astronomy,  geography,  meteorology,  and  geology,  existing 
as  component  parts  of  their  several  systems.  Nor  have 
there  been  wanting  ingenious  men  who,  though  little  toler- 
ant of  the  various  attempts  made  to  reconcile  the  Mosaic 
account  of  creation  with  the  discoveries  of  modern  science, 
have  looked  with  a  favorable  eye  on  the  wild  science  of  the 
false  religions,  and  professed  to  detect  in  it  at  least  striking 
analogies  with  the  deductions  of  both  the  geologist  and  the 
astronomer.  When  the  skeptical  wits  of  the  last  century 
wished  to  produce,  by  way  of  foil,  a  morality  vastly 
superior,  as  they  said,  to  that  of  Christianity,  they  had 
recourse  to  the  Brahmins  and  the  Chinese.  And  though 
we  hear  less  of  the  ethics  of  these  people  since  we  have 
come    to    know   them   better,   we    are    still   occasionally 

*  For  a  brief  but  masterly  view  of  tlirs?  ancient  cosmogonies,  sec  the 
Rev.  D.  Macdonald's  "  Creation  and  the  Fall,"  Edinburgh :  Constable  & 
Co. 


364  THE    DISCO  VERAULE 

reminded  of  the  superiority  of  their  science.  Hinduism  his 
been  regarded  as  furnishing  examples  of  the  geologic  doc- 
trine of  a  succession  of  creations  extended  over  immensely- 
protracted  geologic  periods ;  and  Buddhism  represented  as 
charged  w'ltVi  both  the  geologic  doctrine  and  the  perhaps 
less  certain  astronomic  deduction  of  a  plurality  of  worlds. 
And  before  entering  on  our  general  argument,  it  may  be 
well  to  show  by  specimen  what  mere  chance  hits  these  are, 
and  how  enoi'mous  the  amount  of  the  nonsense  and  absurd- 
ity really  is  in  w^hich  they  are  set. 

When  Brahma,  wearied  with  the  work  of  producing  and 
maintaining  the  universe,  goes  to  sleep,  say  the  Hindus,  — 
an  occurrence  which  happens  at  the  end  of  every  four  mil- 
lions of  years,  —  a  deluge  of  water  rises  high  above  the  sun 
and  moon,  and  the  worlds  and  their  inhabitants  are  de- 
stroyed. When  he  awakes,  however,  he  immediately  sets 
himself  to  produce  anew ;  and  another  universe  springs  up, 
consisting,  like  the  former  one,  of  ten  worlds  placed  over 
each  other,  like  the  stories  of  a  tall  building,  and  replenished 
with  plants  and  animals.  Of  these  our  own  world  is  the 
eighth  in  number,  reckoning  from  the  ground  floor  up- 
wards ;  there  are  seven  worlds  worse  than  itself  beneath  it, 
and  two  better  ones  above ;  with  a  few  worlds  more  higher 
up  still,  to  which  the  destroying  flood  does  not  reach,  save 
once  or  twice  in  an  eternity  or  so ;  and  which,  in  conse- 
quence, have  not  to  be  re-created  each  time  with  the  others. 
The  special  forms  which  the  upper  and  nether  M'orlds  ex. 
hibit  do  not  seem  to  be  very  well  known  ;  but  that  which 
man  inhabits  is  "  flat,  like  the  flower  of  the  water-lily,  in 
which  the  petals  project  beyond  each  other ; "  and  it  has  in 
all,  including  sea  and  land,  a  diameter  of  several  hundred 
thousand  milliotis  of  miles.  It  has  its  many  great  oceans, 
—  one  of  these  (unfortunately  the  only  one  in  contact  with 
man's  place  of  habitation)  of  salt  water,  one  of  sugar-cane 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  365 

juice,  one  of  spirituous  liquor,  one  of  clarified  butter,  and 
one  of  sour  curds.  It  has,  besides,  its  very  great  ocean  of 
sweet  Av^ater.  And  around  all,  forming  a  sort  of  gigantic 
hoop  or  ring,  there  extends  a  continent  of  pure  gold.  Of 
all  the  luminaries  that  rise  over  this  huge  A\orld,  the  sun  is 
the  nearest :  the  distance  of  the  moon  is  twice  as  great ;  tlie 
lesser  fixed  stars  occur  immediately  beyond  ;  then  Mercury, 
then  Venus,  then  Mars,  then  Jupiter,  then  Saturn ;  and 
finally,  the  great  bear  and  the  polar  star.  And  such  is  that 
cosmogony  and  astronomy  of  the  Brahmins  to  which  their 
religion,  in  its  character  as  a  revelation,  stands  committed, 
and  in  wluch  a  very  lenient  criticism  has  found  the  geologic 
revolutions.  Let  me  draw  my  next  illustration  from  Bud- 
dhism, the  most  ancient  and  most  widely  spread  religion  of 
the  East ;  for,  though  partially  overlaid  in  the  great  Indian 
peninsula  by  the  more  modern  monstrosities  of  Brahminism, 
it  extends  in  one  direction  from  the  Persian  Gulf  to  For- 
mosa and  Japan,  and  in  the  other  from  the  wastes  of 
Siberia  to  the  Gulf  of  Siam.  Scarce  any  of  the  other  forms 
of  heathenism  darken  so  large  a  portion  of  the  map  as 
Buddhism,  —  a  superstition  which  is  estimated  to  include 
within  its  pale  nearly  one  third  of  the  whole  human 
species. 

It  has  been  held,  I  need  scarce  say,  by  most  astronomers 
since  the  times  of  Newton,  that  the  universe  consists  of 
innumerable  systems  of  worlds,  furnished  each  with  its  own 
sun  ;  and  held  by  most  geologists  during  the  last  fifty  years, 
that  the  past  duration  of  our  earth  Avas  divided  into  periods 
of  vast  extent,  each  of  which  had  a  creation  of  its  own. 
And  certainly  in  Buddhism  we  find  both  these  ideas,  —  the 
idea  of  the  existence  of  separate  systems,  each  with  its  own 
sun ;  and  the  idea  of  successive  periods,  each  with  its  own 
creation.  We  ascertain  on  examination,  however,  that  in 
the  superstition  they  are  not  scientific  ideas  at  all,  but  mere 
31* 


366  THE    DISCOVERABLE 

chance  guesses,  set,  like  those  of  Brahminism,  in  a  farago 
of  Avild  and  monstrous  fable.  Each  of  the  many  systems  of 
which  the  universe  is  composed  consists,  say  the  Buddhists, 
of  three  worlds  of  a  circular  form,  joined  together  at  the 
edges,  so  that  there  intervenes  between  them  an  angular 
interspace,  which  constitutes  their  common  hell ;  and  to 
each  of  these  systems  there  is  a  sun  and  moon  apportioned, 
that  take  their  daily  journeys  over  them,  returning  at  night 
through  a  void  space  underneath.  And  each  of  the  bygone 
successive  creations  was  a  creation  originated,  it  is  added, 
out  of  chaos,  through  the  stored-up  merits  of  the  Buddhas, 
and  the  cifects  of  a  life-invigorating  rain,  and  which  sank 
into  chaos  again  when  the  old  stock  of  merit,  accumulated 
in  the  previous  period,  was  exhausted.  The  creatures  of 
each  pei-iod,  too,  whether  brute  or  human,  were  animated 
by  but  the  souls  of  former  creatures  embodied  anew.  In 
the  centre  of  each  of  the  three  worlds  of  Avhich  a  system  or 
sachwala  consists,  there  is  a  vast  mountain,  more  than  forty 
thousand  miles  in  height,  surrounded  by  a  circular  sea, 
which  is  in  turn  surrounded  by  a  ring  of  land  and  rock. 
Another  circular  sea  lies  outside  the  ring,  and  a  second 
solid  ring  outside  the  sea ;  and  thus  rings  of  land  and  water 
alternate  from  the  centre  to  the  circumference.  According 
to  the  geography  of  the  Buddhas,  a  model  of  our  own  earth 
would  exactly  resemble  that  old-fashioned  ornament,  —  a 
work  of  the  turning-lathe,  —  which  some  of  my  auditors 
must  have  seen  roughening  the  upper  board  of  the  ornate 
parlor  bellows  of  the  last  century,  and  which  consisted  of  a 
large  central  knob,  surrounded  by  alternate  circular  rings 
and  furrows.  And  as  in  the  old-fashioned  bellows  each  riner 
flattened,  and  each  furrow  became  shallower,  in  proportion 
as  it  was  removed  from  the  centre,  so  in  the  Buddhist  earth, 
the  seas,  from  being  many  thousand  miles  deep  in  the  inner 
rings,  shallow  so  greatly,  that  in  the  outer  rings  their  depth 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  367 

is  only  an  inch ;  -wliile  the  continents,  fi-om  being  forty 
thousand  miles  high,  sink  into  mere  plains,  almost  on  the 
level  of  the  surrounding  ocean.  Such  is  the  geography  to 
Avhich  this  religion  pledges  itself  Its  astronomy,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  not  quite  so  bad  as  that  to  which  Father 
CuUen  has  affixed  his  imprimatur,  seeing  that,  though  it 
gives  the  same  sort  of  diurnal  journey  to  the  sun,  it  confers 
upon  it  a  diameter,  not  of  only  six  feet,  but  of  four  hundred 
miles.  Nor  is  its  geology  a  great  deal  worse  than  that  of 
many  Christians.  It  makes  the  earth  consist,  reckoning 
from  its  foundations  upwards,  of  a  layer  of  Avind,  a  layer  of 
water,  a  layer  of  substance  resembling  honey,  a  layer  of 
rock,  and  a  layer  of  soil.  Such  is  a  small  portion  of  the 
natural  science  of  Buddhism  :  the  minute  details  of  its  mon- 
strous cosmogony,  with  its  descriptions  of  fabulous  oceans, 
inhabited  by  fishes  thousands  of  miles  in  length,  and  of 
wonderful  forests  abounding  in  trees  four  hundred  miles 
high,  and  haunted  by  singing  lions  that  leap  two  miles  at  a 
bound,  occupy  many  chapters  of  the  siu-red  volumes.  Every 
form  of  faith  has  its  heretics ;  and  there  are,  it  would  seem, 
Keretics  among  even  the  Buddhists,  who,  instead  of  adopt' 
ing  the  nonsense  of  the  priests  m  this  physical  department, 
originate  a  nonsense  equally  great  of  their  own.  The  error 
of  concluding  that  tlie  worlds  oT  tTie  universe  are  finite  in 
number,  say  the  sacred  books,  is  the  heresy  antaiciada ;  the 
error  of  concluding  that  the  world  itself  is  infinite  is  the 
heresy  cmantawada  y'  the  error  of  concluding  that  the  world 
is  finite  vertically  but  infinite  horizontally  is  the  heresy 
anantanantawada/  and  the  error  of  concluding  the  world 
to  be  neither  finite  nor  infinite  is  the  heresy  nawantancm- 
taioada.  A  name  equally  formidable  would  be,  of  course, 
found  for  the  students  of  modern  astronomy  and  the  other 
kindred  sciences,  among  the  professed  believers  in  Buddh, 
did  not  these  contrive  to  get  over  the  difficultv  bv  observing, 


368  THE    DISCOVERABLE 

"that  certain  things,  as  stated  in  the  Sastras,  must  have 
been  so  formerly ;  but  great  changes  have  taken  place  in 
these  in  latter  times ;  and  for  astronomical  purposes  astro- 
nomical rules  must  be  followed." 

Believers  in  Buddhism  may  be  still  found  by  tens  of 
millions  on  the  shores  of  the  Yellow  Sea.  Let  me  select 
my  third  specimen  of  a  universe-fashioning  mythology  from 
a  fixith,  long  since  extinct,  that  had  its  seat  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  Old  World,  along  the  coasts  of  the  Northern 
Atlantic.  The  old  Teutonic  religion  professed  to  reveal, 
like  that  of  Buddh  and  of  Brahma,  hoio  the  heavens  and 
earth  were  formed,  and  of  what.  Ymir,  the  great  frost- 
giant,  a  being  mysteriously  engendered  out  of  frozen  A'apor, 
was  slain  by  the  god  Odin  and  his  brothers ;  and,  di-agging 
his  body  into  the  middle  of  the  universe,  they  employed 
the  materials  of  which  it  was  composed  in  forming  the 
earth.  Of  his  blood  they  made  the  vast  ocean,  and  all  the 
lakes  and  rivers ;  of  his  flesh  they  constructed  the  land, 
placing  it  in  the  midst  of  the  Avaters ;  of  his  bones  they 
built  up  the  mountains ;  his  teeth  and  jaws  they  broke  up 
into  the  stones  and  pebbles  of  the  earth  and  shore ;  of  his 
great  skull  they  fashioned  the  vault  of  the  heavens ;  and, 
tossing  his  brains  into  the  air,  they  became  the  clouds. 
Earth,  sea,  and  sky,  however,  thus  made,  were  supported 
by  the  great  ash-tree  Yggdrasill,  which,  Avith  its  roots 
anchored  deep  in  the  primordial  abyss,  rose  up  through 
the  A-ast  central  mountains  of  the  Avorld,  and,  stretching 
forth  its  branches  to  the  furthest  heaven,  bore  the  stars  as 
its  fruit.  Encircling  the  Avhole  earth  like  a  ring,  lay  the 
huge  snake  Midgard,  —  alAA'ays  hidden  in  the  sea,  save 
Avhen  half  draAvn  forth  on  one  occasion  by  the  god  Thor ; 
outside  the  snake  a  broader  ring  of  ice-mountains  swept 
round  both  land  and  ocean,  and  formed  the  outer  frame  of  the 
world,  —  for  there  lay  only  blank  space  beyond ;  and  over 


AND    THE    KEVEALED.  3G9 

all,  the  sun  and  moon  performed  their  journeys,  chased 
througli  the  sky  by  ravenous  wolves,  tliat  ever  sought  to 
devour  them.  Such  Avas  the  wild  dream  of  our  Scandi- 
navian ancestors,  —  a  dream,  however,  that  occupied  as 
prominent  a  ])lace  in  their  Edda  as  any  of  their  other 
religious  beliefs,  and  Avhich,  with  the  first  dawn  of  science, 
would  not  only  have  fallen  itself,  but  would  have  also 
dragged  down  the  others  along  with  it. 

Now  this  physical  department  has  ever  proved  the  vul- 
nerable portion  of  false  religions,  —  the  portion  which,  if  I 
may  use  the  metaphor,  their  originators  could  not  dip  in 
the  infernal  river.  The  ability  of  drawing  the  line,  in  the 
early  and  ignorant  ages  of  the  world,  between  Avhat  man 
can  of  himself  discover  and  what  he  cannot,  is  an  ability 
which  man  cannot  possibly  possess.  The  ancient  Chaldeans, 
who  first  watched  the  motions  of  the  planets,  could  not 
possibly  have  foreseen,  that  while  on  the  one  hand  men 
would  be  one  day  able  of  themselves  to  measure  and  weigh 
these  bodies,  and  to  determine  their  distances  from  the 
earth  and  from  each  other,  men  might  never  be  able  of 
themselves  to  demonstrate  the  fact  of  their  authorship,  or 
to  discover  the  true  character  of  their  author.  Nay,  if 
they  could  have  at  all  thought  on  the  subject,  the  latter 
would  have  seemed  to  them  by  much  the  simpler  discovery 
of  the  two.  To  know  at  such  a  time  Avhat  Avas  in  reality 
discoverable  and  Avhat  Avas  not,  would  be  to  know  by 
anticipation  Avhat  is  not  yet  knoAvn,  —  the  limits  of  all 
human  knowledge.  It  Avould  be  to  trace  a  line  non-existent 
at  the  period,  and  untraceable,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
until  the  history  of  the  human  race  shall  be  completed.  It 
was  held  by  even  the  sagacious  Socrates,  that  men  cannot 
arrive  at  any  certainty  in  questions  respecting  the  form  or 
motion  of  the  earth,  or  the  mechanism  of  the  heaA'ens;  and 
60  he  set  liimself  to  elucidate  what  he  deemed  much  simpler 


i^''^  THE    DISCOVERABLE 

matters,  —to  prove,  for  instance,  as  we  find  in  the  Phedon, 
that  human  souls  existed  ere  they  came  to  inhabit  their 
mortal  bodies,  and  retained  faint  recollections  of  jjreat  mis- 
fortunes  that  had  overtaken  them  ere  their  embodiment  as 
men,  and  of  sufferings  to  which  they  had  been  subjected  in 
a  primevous  state.  And  lacking  this  ability  of  distinguish- 
ing between  the  naturally  discoverable  and  what  cannot  be 
naturally  discovered,  the  originators  of  the  old  mythologic 
beliefs  obtruded  into  provinces  in  which  ultimately  the  law- 
less nature  of  the  obtrusion  could  not  fail  to  be  detected ; 
and  thus,  by  making  their  false  science  a  portion  of  their 
false  religion,  they  created  Mdiat  was  afterwards  to  prove 
its  weakest  and  most  vulnerable  part.  We  absolutely  know 
that  the  course  at  present  pursued  by  enlightened  Christian 
missionaries  in  India  is  to  bring  scientific  truth  into  direct 
antagonism  with  the  monstrously  lalse  science  of  the  pre- 
tended revelations  of  Parseeism,  Brahminism,  and  Buddh- 
ism ;  and  that  by  this  means  the  general  falsity  of  these 
systems  has  been  so  plainly  shown,  that  it  has  become  a 
matter  of  doubt  whether  a  single  educated  native  of  any 
considerable  ability  in  reality  believes  in  them.  They.«eem 
to  have  lost  their  hold  of  all  the  minds  capable  of  appre- 
ciating the  weight  and  force  of  scientific  evidence. 

Let  us  further  remark,  that  since  it  seems  inevitable 
that  pretended  revelations  of  ancient  date  should  pledge 
themselves  to  a  false  science,  the  presumption  must  be 
strong  that  an  ancient  revelation  of  great  multiplicity  of 
detail,  which  has  not  so  pledged  itself,  is  not  a  false,  but 
a  true  revelation.  Xay,  if  we  find  in  it  the  line  drawn 
between  what  man  can  know  of  himself  and  what  he  cannot 
know,  and  deterraina  that  this  line  was  traced  in  a  remote 
and  primitive  age,  we  have  positi\'e  evidence  in  the  circum- 
stance, good  so  far  as  it  extends,  of  its  Divine  origin. 
Ifow,  it  will  be  ultimately  found  that  this  line  was  drawn 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  371 

with  exquisite  precision  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  —  not 
merely  tlie  most  nncient  works  that  profess  to  be  reve- 
lations, but  absolutely  the  most  ancient  of  all  writings. 
Unfortunately,  however,  what  God  seems  to  have  done  for 
his  Revelation,  influential  theologians  of  both  the  Romish 
and  Orthodox  Churches  have  labored  hard  to  undo ;  and, 
from  their  mistaking,  in  not  a  few  remarkable  passages,  the 
scope  and  object  of  the  vouchsafed  message,  they  have  at 
various  tunes  striven  to  pledge  it  to  a  science  as  false  as 
even  that  of  Buddhist,  Teuton,  or  Hindu,  And  so,  not 
only  has  the  argument  been  weakened  and  obscured  which 
might  be  founded  on  the  rectitude  of  the  line  drawn  of  old 
between  what  ought  and  what  ought  not  to  be  the  subject 
of  revelation,  but  even  a  positive  argument  has  been  fur- 
nished to  the  infidel,  —  ever  ready  to  identify  the  glosses 
of  the  theologian  with  the  enunciations  of  revelation  itself, 
—  similar  to  that  which  the  Christian  missionary  directs 
against  the  false  religions  of  India.  It  may  be  well  briefly 
to  inquire  how  this  unlucky  mistake  has  originated. 

It  is  of  first  importance  often  to  the  navigator  that  he 
shoidd  have  a  good  chronometer,  seeing  that  his  ability  of 
determining  his  exact  position  on  wide  seas,  and,  in  conse- 
quence, of  determining  also  the  exact  place  and  bearing  of 
the  rocks  and  reefs  which  he  must  avoid,  and  of  the  lands 
and  harbors  on  which  he  must  direct  his  course,  must  very 
much  depend  upon  the  rectitude  of  his  instrument.  But 
it  may  be  of  very  little  importance  to  him  to  know  how 
chronometers  are  made.  And  so  a  friend  may  reveal  to 
him  where  the  best  chronometers  are  to  be  jmrchased,  with 
the  name  of  the  maker,  Avithout  at  the  same  time  revealing 
to  him  the  principle  on  which  they  are  constructed.  Let 
■us  suppose,  howevei',  that  from  some  pecuUarity  in  the 
mode  of  the  revelation,  the  navigator  has  come  to  believe 
that  it  mcludes  both  items,  —  an  enunciation  regarding  the 


372  THE    DISCOVERABLE 

place  where  and  the  maker  from  whom  the  best  chronome- 
ters are  to  be  had,  and  a  further  enunciation  regarding  the 
true  mechanism  of  chronometers.  Let  us  suppose  further, 
that  while  the  good  faith  and  intelligence  of  his  friend  are 
unquestionable,  the  STipposed  revelation  regarding  the  con- 
Btruction  of  chronometers,  which  he  thinks  he  owes  to 
him,  is  altogether  erroneous  and  absurd.  The  chronome- 
ter mainly  diifers  from  the  ordinary  watch  in  being  formed 
of  a  mixture  of  metals,  which  preserve  so  nice  a  chemical 
balance,  that  those  changes  of  teipperatui'e  which  quicken 
or  retard  the  movements  of  common  time-pieces  fail  to 
aifect  it.  Now,  lot  us  suppose  that  the  friend  and  adviser 
of  the  sailor  had  said  to  him,  —  nsing  a  common  meton- 
ymy,—  there  are  no  chronometers  anywhere  constructed 
that  so  completely  neutralize  the  temperature  as  the  ones  I 
recommend  to  you  ;  and  that  the  sailor  had  at  once  leaped 
to  the  conclusion,  that  the  remark  was  authority  enough 
for  holding  that  it  is  the  principle  of  chronometers,  not  to 
be  composed  of  such,  counteractive  combinations  of  metals 
as  that  the  expansion  of  one  shall  be  checked  by  the  con- 
traction of  another,  but  to  keep  up  an  equal  temperature 
within  through  a  heat-engendering  quality  in  the  amalga- 
mated metals.  Such  a  mistake  might  be  readily  enough 
originated  in  this  way ;  and  yet  it  would  be  a  very  serious 
mistake  indeed ;  seeing  that  it  would  substitute  an  active 
for  a  passive  princijjle,  —  a  principle  of  equalizing  the  tem- 
perature by  acting  upon  it,  for  a  principle  of  inert  impassi- 
bility to  the  temperature.  And  of  course  not  only  would 
the  sailor  liimself  be  in  error  in  taking  such  a  view,  but  he 
might  seriously  compromise  the  intelligence  or  integrity  of 
his  friend  in  the  judgment  of  all  who  held,  on  his  testi- 
mony, that  it  was  Avith  his  friend,  and  not  from  his  own 
misconception  of  his  friend's  meaning,  that  the  view  had 
originated.    And  how,  let  us  ask,  ere  dismissing  our  length- 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  37iJ 

ened  illustration,  is  an  error  such  as  tlie  supposed  one  here 
to  be  tested,  and  its  erroneousness  exposed  ?  There  can  be 
but  one  reply  to  such  a  query.  It  might  be  wholly  in  vain 
to  fall  back  upon  the  ipsissima  verba  of  the  revelation 
made  by  the  sailor's  friend.  Though  in  reality  but  an 
enunciation  regarding  the  authorship  of  certam  chronome- 
ters, it  might  possibly  enough  appear,  from  its  metonymic 
character,  to  be  also  a  revelation  regarding  the  construc- 
tion of  chronometers.  The  sailor's  error  respecting  the 
construction  of  chronometers  is  to  be  tested  and  exposed, 
not  by  any  references  to  what  his  friend  had  said,  but  by 
the  art  of  the  chronometer  maker.  The  demonstrable  prin- 
ciples of  the  art,  as  practised  by  the  makers  of  chronome- 
ters, must  be  the  test  of  all  supposed  revelations  regarding 
the  principles  and  mechanism  of  chronometer  making. 

Now,  it  will  be  found  that  those  mistakes  of  the  theolo- 
gians to  which  I  refer  have  been  exactly  similar  to  that  of 
the  navigator  in  the  supposed  case,  and  that  they  are  mis- 
takes which  must  be  corrected  on  exactly  the  same  prin- 
ciple. The  dejDartments  in  ^\hich  the  mistakes  have  been 
made,  have,  as  in  the  false  religions,  been  chiefly  three,  — 
the  geographic,  astronomic,  and  geologic  provinces.  The 
geographic  errors  are  of  comparatively  ancient  date.  They 
belong  mainly  to  the  later  patristic  and  earlier  middle  ages, 
when  the  monk  Cosmas,  as  the  geographer  of  the  Church, 
represented  the  earth  as  a  parallelogrammical  plain,  twice 
longer  than  it  was  broad,  deeply  indented  by  the  inland 
seas,  —  the  Mediterranean,  the  Caspian,  the  Red  Sea,  and 
the  Persian  Gulf,  —  and  encompassed  by  a  rectangular 
trench  occupied  by  the  oceans.  Some  of  my  audience 
will,  however,  remember  that  of  the  council  of  clergymen 
which  met  in  Salamanca  in  1486  to  examine  and  test  the 
views  of  Christopher  Columbus,  a  considerable  portion 
held  it  to  be  grossly  heterodox  to  beUeve  that  by  sailing 
32 


374 


THE    DISCOVERABLE 


westwards  the  eastern  parts  of  the  world  could  be  reached. 
No  one  could  entertain  such  a  view  without  also  beUeving 
that  there  were  antipodes,  and  that  the  world  was  round, 


Fig.  114. 


'^(^^^^^~^^^^^^^^^- 


THE   GEOGRAPHY   OF  COSMAS.* 

{From  a  reduced  facsimile  of  the  original  print  in  the  British  Museum.) 

not  flat,  —  errors  denounced  by  not  only  great  theologians 
of  the  golden  age  of  ecclesiastical  learning,  such  as  Lactan- 
tius  and  St.  Augustine,  but  also  directly  opposed,  it  was 
said,  to  the  very  letter  of  Scripture.  "They  observed," 
says  Washington  Irving,  in  his  "  Life  of  Columbus,"  "  that 
in  the  Psalms  the  heavens  are  said  to  be  extended  like  a 
hide,  —  that  is,  according  to  commentators,  the  curtain 
or  covering  of  a  tent,  which  among  the  ancient  pastoral 
nations  was  formed  of  the  hides  of  animals ;  and  that  St 
Paul,  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  compares  the  heavens 


*  1.  The  great  suiTounding  oceans. 
2   Caspian  Sea. 
3.  River  Phison. 
4-4.  Points  of  the  Compass. 
5.  Mediterranean  Sea. 


(5.  Red  Sea. 

7-8.  Persian  Gulf,  with  the  rivers 

Tigris  and  Euphrates. 

9.  River  Gihon. 


AND    THE    REVEALED 


375 


to  a  tabernacle  or  tent  extended  over  the  earth,  which  they 
thence  inferred  must  be  flat."  In  the  sectional  view  of 
Cosmas  the  heavens  are  rejiresented  as  a  semicircular  vault 
or  tent  raised  on  perpendicular  walls;    a  vast  mountain 


THE   HEAVENS   AND   EARTH   OF    COSMAS.* 

{Sectional  View.) 

beyond  the  "  Great  Sea,"  lofty  as  the  innermost  continent 
of  the  Buddhist  cosmogony,  rises  immediately  under  it ; 
when  the  sun  passed  behind  this  mountain  it  was  night, 
and  when  it  emerged  from  it  it  was  day.  And  certainly 
under  the  crystal  box  of  the  monk  it  would  be  in  vain  to 
attempt,  by  passing  westwards,  to  arrive  at  the  far  east. 
The  cosmogony  of  Cosmas  was  also  that  of  the  doctors  of 
Salamanca ;  and  the  views  of  Columbus  were  denounced  as 
heterodox  because  they  failed  to  conform  to  it.     Such  was 


*  1.  The  sun  Occident. 

2.  The  sun  orient. 

3.  The  Heavens. 

4.  Great  mountain  Ijcliind  whicli 

the  sun  is  liidden  when  it  is 
nijjjlit. 
5.  The  Mediterranean  Sea. 


fi.  Eed  Sea. 

7.  Persian  Gulf. 

8.  Garden  of  Eden. 

9.  Great  surrounding  ocean 
10.  The  Creator  looking  down 

upon  liis  work,  and  seeing 
that  all  was  good. 


376  THE    DISCOVERABLE 

one  of  the  earliei'  mistakes  of  the  theologians.  "When 
merely  tokl  regarding  the  authorship  of  the  chronometer, 
they  held  that  they  had  been  told  also  respecting  the  mech- 
anism of  the  chronometer.  Attaching  literal  meaninsrs  to 
what  we  now  recognize  as  merely  poetic  or  oratorical  fig- 
ures, they  believed  that  not  only  was  it  revealed  to  them 
that  God  had  created  the  heavens  and  earth,  but  also  that 
he  had  created  the  earth  in  the  form  of  an  extended  plain, 
and  placed  a  semi-globular  heavens  over  it,  just  as  one 
places  a  semi-globular  case  of  glass  over  a  piece  of  flower- 
plot  or  a  miniature  thicket  of  fern.  And  how,  I  ask,  was 
this  error  ultimately  corrected?  Simply  by  that  science 
of  the  geographer  which  demonstrates  that  the  earth  is 
not  flat,  but  spherical,  and  that  the  heavens  have  not 
edges,  like  a  skin-tent  or  glass-case,  to  come  anywhere  in 
contact  with  it,  but  consist  mainly  of  a  diff'uscd  atmos- 
phere, with  illimitable  space  beyond. 

The  second  great  error  to  which  the  theologians  would 
fain  have  pledged  the  truth  of  Scripture  was  an  error  in 
the  astronomical  province.  I  need  scarce  refer  to  the 
often-adduced  case  of  Galileo.  The  doctrine  Avhicli  the 
philosopher  liad  to  "  abjure,  curse,  and  detest,"  and  which 
he  was  never  again  to  teach,  "  because  erroneous,  heretical, 
and  contrary  to  Scrijiture,"  was  the  doctrine  of  the  earth's 
motion  and  the  sun's  stability.  But  to  the  part  taken  by 
our  Protestant  divines  in  the  same  controversy,  —  men  still 
regarded  as  authorities  in  their  own  proper  walk,  —  I  must 
be  allowed  to  refer,  as  less  known,  though  not  less  in- 
structive, than  that  enacted  by  the  Romish  Church  in  the 
case  of  Galileo.  "This,  we  aftirm,  that  is,  that  the  earth 
rests,  and  the  sun  moves  daily  around  it,"  said  Voetius, 
a  great  Dutch  divine  of  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  "  with  all  divines,  natural  philosophers,  Jews  and 
Mohammedans,  Greeks  and  Latins,  excepting  one  or  two 


AND  THE  revi:alI':d.  377 

of  the  ancients,  and  the  modern  followers  of  Copernicus." 
And  we  detect  Ileideggeri,  a  Swiss  theologian,  who  flour- 
ished about  half  an  age  later,  giving  expression,  a  few 
years  ere  the  commencement  of  the  last  century,  to  a  simi- 
lar view,  as  the  one  taken  by  himself  and  many  others,  and 
as  a  view  "  from  which,"  he  states,  "  our  pious  reverence 
for  the  Scriptures,  the  word  of  truth,  will  not  allow  us  to 
depart."  A  still  more  remarkable  instance  occurs  in  Tur- 
rettine,  whom  we  find  in  one  of  his  writings  arguing  in 
the  strictly  logical  form,  "  in  opposition  to  certain  philoso- 
phers," and  in  behalf  of  the  old  Ptolemaic  doctrine  that 
the  sun  moves  in  the  heavens  and  revolves  round  the 
earth,  while  the  earth  itself  remains  at  rest  in  the  midst. 
"7^^'rs^,"  he  remarks,  "  the  sun  is  said  in  Scripture  to  move 
in  the  heavens,  and  to  rise  and  set.  'The  sun  is  as  a 
bridegroom  coming  out  of  his  chamber,  and  rejoiceth  as  a 
strong  man  to  run  a  race.'  '  The  sun  knoweth  his  going 
down.'  'The  sun  also  ariseth,  and  the  sim  goeth  down.' 
Secondly^  The  sun  by  a  miracle  stood  still  in  the  time 
of  Joshua ;  and  by  a  miracle  it  went  back  in  the  time  of 
Hezekiah.  Thlrdlij^  The  earth  is  said  to  be  fixed  immov- 
ably. 'The  earth  is  also  established  that  it  cannot  be 
moved.'  '  Thou  hast  established  the  earth,  and  it  abid- 
eth.'  '  They  contiiuie  this  day  accoi'ding  to  their  ordi- 
nance.' Fourthly^  Neither  could  birds,  which  often  fly 
off  through  an  hour's  circuit,  be  able  to  return  to  their 
nests.  Fifthly^  Whatever  flies  or  is  suspended  in  the  air 
ought  (by  this  theory)  to  move  from  west  to  east ;  but  this 
is  proved  not  to  be  true,  from  birds,  arrows  shot  forth, 
atoms  made  manifest  in  the  sun,  and  down  floating  in  the 
atmosphere."  The  theologian,  after  thus  lajang  down  the 
law,  sets  himself  to  meet  objections.  If  it  be  urged  that 
the  Scriptures  in  natural  things  speak  according  to  the 
common  opinion,  Turrettiue  answers,  ''''Firsts  The  Spirit  of 
:i2* 


378  THE    DISCOVERABLE 

God  best  Tinderstands  natural  things.  Secondly^  That  in 
givhig  instruction  in  religion,  he  meant  these  things  should 
be  used,  not  abused.  Thirdly,  That  he  is  not  the  author 
of  any  error.  Fourthly,  Neither  is  he  to  be  coiTected  on 
the  pretence  of  our  blind  reason."  If  it  be  further  itrged, 
that  birds,  the  air,  and  all  things  are  moved  with  the  earth, 
he  answers,  '■'' First,  That  this  is  a  mere  fiction,  since  air  is 
a  fluid  body;  and  secondly,  if  so,  by  what  force  would 
birds  be  able  to  go  from  east  to  west  ?  " 

Now  this  I  must  regard  as  a  passage  as  instructive  as  it 
is  extraordinary.  Turrettine  was  one  of  the  most  accom- 
plished theologians  of  his  age ;  nor  is  that  age  by  any 
means  a  remote  one.  Tycho  Brahe,  Kepler,  and  Galileo, 
had  all  finished  their  labors  long  ere  he  published  this  pas- 
sage; nay,  at  the  time  when  his  work  issued  from  the 
Amsterdam  press  (1695),  Isaac  Newton  had  attained  his 
fifty-third  year;  and  fully  ten  years  previous.  Professor 
David  Gregoiy,  nephew  of  the  inventor  of  the  Gregorian 
telescope,  had  begun  to  teach,  from  his  chair  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh,  the  doctrine  of  gravitation  and  the  true 
mechanism  of  the  heavens,  as  unfolded  in  the  Newtonian 
philosophy.  The  learned  theologian,  had  he  applied  him- 
self to  astronomical  science,  could  have  found  at  the  time 
very  enlightened  teachers ;  but  filling  into  exactly  the  mis- 
take of  the  sailor  of  my  illustration,  or  that  into  which,  two 
centuries  before,  the  doctors  of  Salamanca  had  fallen,  he 
set  himself,  instead,  to  contend  with  the  astronomers,  and, 
to  the  extent  of  his  influence,  labored  to  pledge  revelation 
to  an  astronomy  as  false  as  that  of  the  Buddhist,  Hindu,  or 
old  Teuton.  His  mistake,  I  repeat,  was  exactly  that  of  the 
sailor.  Though  in  the  Scriptures  only  the  fact  of  the 
aufhorship  of  the  great  chronometer  set  in  the  heaA'ens  "to 
be  a  sign  for  seasons,  and  for  days  and  years,"  is  revealed, 
he  regarded  himself  as  also  infr-«"med  respecting  the  prin- 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  379 

ciples  on  Avhich  tlie  clironometer  was  coi\structecl,  or  at 
least  resj^ecting  tlie  true  nature  of  its  movements ;  and 
several  very  important  deductions  may,  I  think,  be  drawn 
from  the  carefully  constructed  passage  in  which  he  so  un- 
wittingly records  his  error,  and  the  grounds  of  it.  In  the 
first  place,  we  may  safely  hold  that  the  texts  of  Scripture 
quoted  by  so  able  a  theologian  are  those  which  have  most 
the  appearance  of  being  revelations  to  men  respecting  the 
motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  We  may  conclusively 
infer,  that  if  they  do  not  reveal  the  character  of  those 
motions,  then  nowhere  in  Scripture  is  their  character 
revealed.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  obvious  that  the  cited 
texts  do  not  reveal  the  nature  of  the  motions.  It  Avould  be 
as  rational  to  hold  that  our  best  almanacs  reveal  the  Ptole- 
maic astronomy.  In  the  scientific  portion  of  our  almanacs 
there  occur  many  phrases  which  are  perfectly  well  under- 
stood, and  indicate  very  definitely  what  the  writer  really 
intends  to  express  by  them,  that  yet,  taken  literally,  are  not 
scientifically  true.  The  Avords,  "  Sun  rises,"  and  "  Sun 
sets,"  and  "Moon  rises,"  and  "Moon  sets,"  occur  in  every 
page;  there  are  two  pages  —  those  devoted  to  the  months 
of  March  and  September  —  in  which  the  phrase  occurs, 
"  Sun  crosses  the  equinoctial  line ; "  and  further,  in  the 
other  pages,  such  phi-ases  as  "  Sun  enters  Aries,"  "  Sun 
enters  Taurus,"  "Sun  enters  Gemini,"  &c.,  &c.,  are  not 
imfrequent.  The  phrase,  "new  moon,"  is  also  of  common 
occurrence.  And  these  phrases,  interpreted  after  the 
manner  of  Turrettine,  and  according  to  their  strict  gram- 
matical meaning,  Avould  of  course  imply  that  the  sun  has  a 
motion  round  our  planet,  —  that  the  moon  moves  round  it 
every  twenty-four  hours,  —  and  that  the  earth  is  provided 
every  month  \\\\\\  a  new  satellite.  And  yet  Ave  know  that 
none  of  these  ideas  are  in  the  mind  of  the  writer  who,  in 
coraiDiling  the  almanac,  emj^loys  the  phrases.     He  emjiloys 


380  THE    DISCOVERABLE 

them  to  indicate,  not  the  nature  of  the  heavenly  motions, 
but  the  exact  time  \vhen,  from  the  several  motions  of  the 
earth,  the  smi  and  moon  are  brought  into  certain  ajiparent 
positions  witli  respect  to  either  the  earth  itself  or  to  the 
celestial  signs;  or  to  indicate  the  time  at  which  the  moon 
completes  its  monthly  rcA'olution,  and  presents  a  Avholly 
darkened  disk  to  the  earth.  The  commentator  skilful 
enough  to  pledge  the  almanac,  in  virtue  of  the  literal  mean- 
ing of  the  specified  phrases,  to  the  old  Ptolemaic  hypothesis, 
would  pledge  it  to  a  false  science,  which  its  author  never 
held.  And  such,  evidently,  has  been  the  part  enacted  by 
Turrettine  and  the  elder  theologians.  The  Scriptural 
phrases  are  in  no  degree  more  express  respecting  the  motion 
of  the  sun  and  the  other  heavenly  bodies  than  those  of  the 
almanac,  which,  we  know,  do  not  refer  to  motion  at  all,  but 
to  time.  Nor  are  we  less  justified  in  holding  that  the  cited 
Scriptures  do  not  refer  to  motion,  but  to  axitliorship.  In 
the  third  place,  however,  it  is  not  by  any  mere  reconsider- 
ation of  the  adduced  passages  that  the  error,  once  made,  is 
to  be  corrected.  In  a  purely  astronomic  question  the 
appeal  lies,  not  to  Scri2:)ture,  but  to  astronomic  science. 
And  in  the  fourth  ])lace,  the  reasonings  of  Turrettine,  when, 
quitting  his  own  proper  walk,  he  discourses,  not  as  a  theo- 
logian, but  as  a  natural  philosopher,  ai"e  such  as  to  read  a 
lesson  not  wholly  unneeded  in  the  present  day.  They  show 
how  in  a  department  in  which  it  demanded  the  united  life- 
long labors  of  a  Kepler,  Galileo,  and  Newton  to  elicit  the 
truth,  the  hasty  guesses  of  a  great  theologian,  rashly  ven- 
tured in  a  polemic  spirit,  gave  form  and  body  to  but 
ludicrous  error.  It  is  not  after  a  fixshion  so  impetuous  and 
headlong  that  the  elaborately  wrought  key  must  be  plied 
which  unlocks  the  profound  mysteries  of  nature.  But  of 
this  more  anon. 

Let  me  remark  in  the  passing,  that  while  Turrettine,  one 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  381 

of  the  greatest  of  theologians,  fiiiled,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
find  in  Scinpture  tlie  fact  of  astronomic  construction^  La 
Place,  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  astronomers,  failed  in  a 
manner  equally  signal  to  find  in  his  science  the  fact  of 
astronomic  authorship.  The  profound  Frenchman  (whom 
Sir  David  Brewster  well  characterizes  as  "  the  philosopher 
to  whom  posterity  will  probably  assign  the  place  next  to 
Newton"),  by  demonstrating  that  certain  irregularities  in 
the  motion  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  which  had  been  sup- 
posed to  indicate  a  future  termination  to  the  whole,  were 
but  mere  oscillations,  subject  to  periodic  correction,  and 
indicative  of  no  such  termination  in  (consequence,  demon- 
strated also  that,  from  all  that  appeai-s,  the  present  astro- 
nomical movements  might  go  on  forever.  And  as  he  could 
find  in  the  solar  system  no  indications  of  an  end,  so  was  he 
unable,  he  said,  to  find  in  it  any  trace  of  a  beginning.  He 
failed  in  discovering  in  all  astronomy  the  fact  of  authorship, 
just  as  Turrettine  had  failed  in  finding  in  all  Scripture  the 
fact  of  astronomic  construction.  And  here  lies,  I  am 
inclined  to  think,  the  true  line  between  revelation  and 
science,  —  a  line  drawn  of  old  with  a  God-derived*  pi-ecision, 
Avhich  can  be  rightly  appreciated  neither  by  mere  theolo- 
gians like  Turrettine,  nor  by  mere  men  of  science  like  La 
Place,  but  which  is  notwithstanding  fraught  with  an  e\'i- 
dence  direct  in  its  bearing  on  the  truth  of  Scripture.  That 
great  fact,  moral  in  its  influence,  of  tlie  authorship  of  the 
heavens  and  earth,  which  the  science  of  La  Place  failed  of 
itself  to  discover,  and  which  Avas  equally  unknown  to  the 
ancient  philosophers,  God  has  revealed.  It  is  "through 
faith  we  understand  that  the  worlds  were  formed  by  the 
word  of  God,  so  that  things  Avhich  are  seen  were  not  made 
of  things  which  do  appear."  And,  on  the  other  hand,  tlie 
great  truths,  physical  in  tl.oir  bearing,  to  the  discovery  of 
which  science  is  fully  competent,  God  did  not  reveal,  but  left 


382  THE    DISCOVERABLE 

them  to  be  developed  piecemeal  by  the  miassisted  human 
faculties.  And  that  ability  of  nicely  drawing  the  line 
between  the  two  classes  of  truths  in  a  very  remote  age  of 
the  world,  which  Ave  find  manifested  in  the  oldest  of  the 
Scriptural  books,  I  must  regard  as  an  ability  which  could 
have  been  derived  only  through  inspiration,  and  from  God 
alone. 

Let  us,  however,  pursue  our  argument.  Questions  of 
geography,  such  as  those  entertained  by  the  theologians  of 
Salamanca,  must  be  tested,  we  conclude,  not  by  a  revelation 
never  intended  by  its  Divine  Author  to  teach  geography, 
but  by  the  findings  of  geographic  science.  Questions  in 
astronomy,  such  as  those  which  Turrettine  and  the  oppo- 
nents of  Galileo  entertained,  must  be  tried,  we  hold,  not  by 
a  revelation  never  intended  to  teach  astronomy,  but  by  the 
findings  of  astronomic  science.  But  how  deal,  I  next  ask, 
with  the  theologian  who  holds  that  geologic  fact  has  been 
revealed  to  him  ?  Geology  is  as  thoroughly  a  physical 
science  as  either  geography  or  astronomy.  Its  facts  are 
equally  capable  of  being  educed  and  established  by  the  un- 
assisted human  intellect.  It  seems  quite  as  unlikely  that 
it  should  have  been  made  a  special  subject  of  revelation,  in 
its  character  as  a  science,  as  cither  of  these  sciences ;  or 
that  the  line  so  nicely  maintained  with  respect  to  them 
should  have  been  transsjressed  with  regard  to  it.  In  short, 
in  order  satisfactorily  to  answer  our  query,  it  seems  but 
necessary  satisfactorily  to  answer  another,  namely,  What, 
in  this  special  department,  are  truth  and  fact  scientifically 
ascertained  ? 

There  are,  however,  certain  texts  that  appear  to  have  a 
more  direct  bearing  on  the  successive  periods  of  the  geolo- 
gist than  any  of  those  that  were  once  held  to  refer  to  the 
form  of  the  earth,  or  to  the  nature  of  the  heavenly  bodies, 
are   now  believed    to   have  on  geography  or  astronomy. 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  383 

No  one  now  holds  that  there  is  a  geography  revealed  in 
Scripture,  or  regards  the  cavils  of  the  Salamanca  doctors 
as  other  than  mere  aberrations  of  the  human  mind.  Nor, 
save  mayhap  in  the  darker  corners  of  the  Greek  and  Romish 
Churches,  are  there  men  in  the  present  day  who  hold  that 
there  is  a  revealed  astronomy.  The  texts  so  confidently 
quoted  by  Turrettine,  such  as  "  The  sun  also  ariseth  and 
the  sun  goeth  down,"  are  regarded  in  eveiy  Protestant 
Church  as  simply  tantamount,  in  their  bearing  on  the  ques- 
tion at  issue,  to  the  "  Sun  rises "  and  "  Sun  sets "  of  the 
almanac.  But  while  the  Scriptures  do  not  reveal  the  form 
of  the  earth  or  the  motions  of  the  planets,  they  do  reveal 
the  fact  that  the  miracle  of  creation  Avas  eflected,  not  by  a 
single  act,  but  in  several  successive  acts.  And  it  is  with 
the  organisms  produced  by  successive  acts  of  creation,  and 
the  formations  deposited  during  the  j^eriods  in  which  these 
acts  took  place,  that  the  geologist  is  called  on  by  his 
science  to  deal.  And  hence,  while  there  are  now  no 
attempts  made  to  reconcile  geographic  or  astronomic  fact 
with  the  Scripture  passages  which  refer,  in  the  language 
of  the  time,  to  the  glory  of  the  heavens  or  the  stability  of 
the  earth,  just  because  it  is  held  that  there  is  really  nothing 
geographic  or  astronomic  in  the  passages  to  conflict  Avith 
the  geographic  or  astronomic  facts,  we  still  seek  to  reconcile 
the  facts  of  geologic  science  with  what  is  termed  the  Mosaic 
geology.  We  inquire  whether,  in  its  leading  features,  the 
Mosaic  does  not  correspond  with  the  geologic  record ;  and 
whether  the  days  of  the  retrospective  prophecy  of  creation 
are  to  be  regarded  as  coextensive  with  the  vast  periods  of 
the  geologist,  or  as  merely  representative  portions  of  them, 
or  as  literal  days  of  twenty-four  hours  each  ?  But  though 
we  thus  seek  to  harmonize  the  two  records,  Ave  continue  to 
regard  their  grounds  and  objects  as  entirely  different.  The 
object  of  geology  is  simply  the  elucidation  of  the  history  of 


384  THE    DISCOVETwABLE 

the  earth,  and  of  the  stoiy  of  its  various  creations;  and  its 
grounds  are,  like  those  of  astronomy  or  geograpliy,  or  of 
any  other  physical  science,  facts  and  inferences  scientifically 
determined  or  deduced ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
grounds  of  the  Mosaic  record  are  those  on  which  the  other 
Scriptures  rest,  and  which  have  been  so  well  laid  down  in 
what  we  may  term  the  higher  literatm-e  of  the  "Evidences," 
while  at  least  some  of  its  objects,  —  for  who  shall  declare 
them  all?  —  seem  to  be,  first,  to  establish  the  all-important 
fact  of  the  Divine  authorship  of  the  universe,  and  to  show 
that  all  its  various  forces  are  not  self-existent,  but  owe  their 
origin  to  a  Great  First  Cause;  next,  to  exhibit  the  pro- 
gressive character  of  God's  Avorkings,  —  a  character  which 
equally  applies  to  his  works  of  creation  and  providence; 
and,  in  the  third  place,  to  furnish  a  basis  and  precedent,  in 
the  Divine  example,  for  that  institution  of  the  Sabbath 
which  bears  not  only  a  prophetic  reference  to  the  great 
dynasty  to  come,  —  last  of  all  the  dynasties,  and  of  which 
re-created  men  are  to  be  the  happy  subjects,  and  the  Divine 
Man  the  adorable  Monarch,  —  but  which  has  also  been 
specially  established  in  order  that  right  preparation  may  be 
made  for  the  terminal  state  which  it  symbolizes  and  fore- 
shadows. Here,  as  certainly  as  in  the  other  physical 
sciences,  the  line  has  been  drawn  with  perfect  precision 
between  what  man  could  and  what  he  could  not  have 
known  of  himself.  What  he  could  have  known,  and  in 
part  already  knows,  is  geologic  science ;  what  in  all  proba- 
bility he  never  could  have  known  is  the  fact  of  the  Divine 
authorship  of  the  universe,  and  the  true  nature  of  the 
institution  of  the  Sabbath,  as  a  time  of  preparation  for  the 
final  state,  and  as  alike  representative  of  God's  workings  in 
the  past,  and  of  his  eternally  predetermined  scheme  for  the 
future.  "  Is  it  not  certain,"  Socrates  is  represented  as 
inquiring,  in  "  the  first  Alcibiades,"  of  his  gay  and  confident 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  385 

pupil,  "  that  you  know  nothing  but  what  has  been  tohl  you 
by  others,  or  what  you  have  found  out  for  yourself? " 
There  is  at  once  exquisite  simplicity  and  great  terseness  in 
this  natural  division  of  the  only  modes  in  which  men  can 
acquire  knowledge ;  and  we  find  it  wonderfully  exemi)lified 
in  all  revelation.  Scripture  draws  practically  a  broad  line 
between  the  two  modes;  and  while  it  tells  man  all  that  is 
necessary  to  his  wants  and  welfare  as  a  religious  creature,  it 
does  not  communicate  to  him  a  single  scientific  fact  which 
he  is  comi)ctcnt  to  find  out  for  himself 

About  an  age  previous  to  the  times  of  Turrettine,  the 
danger  of  "  corrupting  philosophy  through  an  intermixed 
divinity"  was  admirably  shown  by  Bacon  in  his  "  Xovuni 
Organum;"  and  the  line  indicated  was  exactly  what  we 
now  find  was  laid  down  of  old  with  such  precision  in 
Scripture.  "To  deify  error  and  to  adore  vain  things," 
said  the  great  philosopher,  "may  be  well  accounted  the 
plague  of  the  understanding.  Some  modern  men,  guilty 
of  much  levity,  have  so  indulged  this  vanity,  that  they 
have  essayed  to  find  natural  philosophy  in  the  first  chapter 
of  Genesis,  the  Book  of  Job,  and  other  places  of  holy  writ, 
seeking  the  living  among  the  dead.  Now  this  vanity  is  so 
much  the  more  to  be  checked  and  restrained,  because,  by 
miadvised  mixture  of  Divine  and  human  things,  not  only  a 
phantastical  philosojihy  is  produced,  but  also  an  heretical 
religion.  Therefore  it  is  safe  to  give  unto  Faith,  with  a 
sober  mind,  the  things  that  are  Faith's."  The  passage, 
partially  quoted,  has  been  not  unfrequently  misapplied,  as 
if  it  bore,  not  against  theologians  such  as  Turrettine  and 
the  Franciscans,  but  against  theologians  such  as  Chalmers, 
Dr.  Bird  Sumner,  and  Dr.  Pye  Smith,  —  not  against  the 
men  who  derive  a  false  science  from  Scripture,  into  which 
God  never  introduced  natural  science  of  any  kind,  but 
against  the  men  who,  having  sought  and  acquired  their 
.33 


386  THE    DISCOVERABLE 

science  where  it  is  alone  to  be  found,  liave  striven  to  bring 
Scripture,  in  the  misinterpreted  passages,  into  harmony 
with  its  findings.  Taken,  liowever,  as  a  whole,  its  true 
meaning  is  obvious.  It  is  the  men  who  have  "  essayed  to 
find  natural  philosophy"  positively  revealed  in  Genesis  and 
the  other  sacred  books, — not  the  men  who  have  merely 
shown  that  there  is  nothing  in  Scripture  which  conflicts 
with  the  natural  philosophy  legitimately  found  elsewhere, — 
that  are  obnoxious  to  the  censure  conveyed  in  the  remark. 
It  is  they  only,  and  not  the  others,  that  are  '■'■  phantasticaP^ 
in  their  philosophy  and  '■'■  hereticaV'  in  their  religion.  I 
say  heretical  in  their  religion.  The  Ptolemaic  doctrine 
which  ascribed  to  the  earth  a  central  place  in  the  universe 
was  only  scientifically  false,  Avhereas  the  same  doctrine  in 
Turrettine  and  the  Franciscans,  from  the  circumstance  that 
they  pledged  the  Scripture  to  its  falsity,  and  professed  to  de- 
rive it  direct  from  revelation,  was  not  only  scientifically  false, 
but  a  heresy  to  boot.  And,  in  like  manner,  it  is  the  class 
who  term  themselves  the  "Mosaic  geologists," — men  such 
as  the  Granville  Penns,  Moses  Stewarts,  Eleazar  Lords, 
Dean  Cockburns,  and  Peter  Macfarlanes,  —  who  essay  to 
"  find  natural  philosophy  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis," 
and  that  too  a  demonstrably  false  natural  i^hilosophy,  who 
are  obnoxious  to  the  Baconian  censure  now.  No  true 
geologist  ever  professes  to  deduce  his  geology  from  Scrip- 
ture. It  is  from  the  earth's  crust,  with  its  numerous 
systems,  always  invariable  in  their  order,  and  its  successive 
groups  of  fossil  remains,  always  (in  accordance  with  their 
place  and  age)  of  a  certain  determinable  character,  —  not 
in  a  revelation  never  intended  by  its  Divine  Author  to 
teach  any  natural  science  as  such,  —  that  he  dei-ives  the 
materials  with  which  he  builds.  Had  there  been  no  Divine 
Revelation,  geology  would  be  as  certainly  Avhat  it  now  is 
as  either  geography  or  astronomy.     That  it  comes  in  the 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  387 

present  time  more  in  contact  with  revealed  truth  than 
either  of  these  sciences,  is,  as  I  have  shown,  merely  a 
consequence  of  the  fact  that  there  is  a  history  given  in  the 
opening  passages  of  Scripture,  for  far  other  than  geological 
purposes,  of  the  authorship  of  the  heavens  and  earth,  and 
of  the  successive  stages  of  creation  ;  and  further,  from  the 
circumstance  that,  from  various  motives,  men  are  ever  and 
anon  inquiring  how  the  geologic  agrees  with  the  Scriptural 
record.  It  may  be  well  here  to  remind  the  anti-geologists, 
in  connection  with  this  part  of  my  subject,  of  what  at  the 
utmost  they  may  hope  to  accomplish.  Judging  from  all  I 
have  yet  seen  of  their  writings,  they  seem  to  be  as  certainly 
impressed  by  the  belief  that  they  are  settling  teictually  the 
geologic  question  of  the  world's  antiquity,  as  the  doctors 
of  Salamanca  held  that  they  Avere  settling  textually  the 
question  of  the  world's  form ;  or  Turrettine  and  the  Fran- 
ciscans, that  they  were  settling  textually  the  question  of 
the  world's  motion,  or  rather  want  of  motion.  But  the 
mistake  is  quite  as  gross  in  their  case  as  in  that  of  Turret- 
tine  and  the  doctors.  Geology  rests  on  a  broad,  ever 
extending  basis  of  evidence,  Avholly  independent  of  the 
revelation  on  which  they  profess,  very  unintelligently,  in 
all  the  instances  I  have  yet  known,  to  found  their  objec- 
tions. What  they  need  at  most  promise  themselves  is,  to 
defeat  those  attempts  to  reconcile  the  two  records  Avhich 
are  made  by  geologists  who  respect  and  believe  the  Scrip- 
ture testimony,  —  not  a  very  laudable  feat,  CA^en  could  it  be 
accomplished,  and  certainly  worthy  of  being  made  rather  a 
subject  of  condolence  than  of  congratulation.  And  though, 
of  course,  men  should  pursue  the  truth  simply  for  its  own 
sake,  and  independently  either  of  the  consequences  which 
it  may  be  found  to  in\-olve,  or  of  the  company  Avith  Avhicli 
it  may  bring  them  acquainted,  the  anti-geologists  might 
be  worse   employed   than  in   scanning  the  character  and 


383  THE  DISCOVERABLE 

aims  of  the  associates  with  whom  they  virtually  leajjue 
themselves  when  they  declare  war  against  the  Christian 
geologist. 

There  are  three  different  parties  in  the  field,  either  di- 
rectly opposed,  or  at  least  little  friendly,  to  the  men  who 
honestly  attempt  reconciling  the  Mosaic  with  the  geologic 
record.  First,  there  are  the  anti-geologists,  —  men  who 
hold  that  geological  questions  are  to  be  settled  now  as  the 
Franciscans  contemporary  with  Galileo  held  that  astronomi- 
cal questions  were  to  be  settled  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
or  as  the  doctors  of  Salamanca  contemporaiy  with  Columbus 
held  that  geographic  questions  were  to  be  settled  in  the 
fifteenth.  And  thexj  believe  that  geology,  as  interpreted 
by  the  geologists,  is  entirely  false,  because,  as  they  think, 
irreconcilable  with  Scripture ;  further,  that  our  planet  had 
no  existence  some  seven  or  eight  thousand  years  ago, — 
that  the  apparent  antiquity  of  the  various  sedimentary 
systems  and  organic  groups  of  the  earth's  crust  is  wholly 
illusive,  —  and  that  the  very  oldest  of  them  cannot  be  more 
than  a  few  days  older  than  the  human  period.  In  fine, 
just  as  it  was  held  two  centuries  ago  by  Turrettine  and 
the  Franciscans,  that  the  Bible  as  interpreted  by  them  was 
the  only  legitimate  authority  in  astronomic  questions,  so 
this  class  now  hold  that  the  Bible  as  interpreted  by  them  is 
the  only  legitimate  authority  in  geologic  questions;  and 
further,  that  the  Bible  being,  as  they  contend,  wholly 
opposed  to  the  deductions  of  the  geologist,  these  deduc- 
tions  must  of  necessity  be  erroneous.  Next,  there  is  a 
class,  more  largely  represented  in  society  than  in  literatnre, 
who,  looking  at  the  general  bearings  of  the  question,  the 
character  and  standing  of  the  geologists,  and  the  sublime 
nature  of  their  discoveries,  believe  that  geology  ranks  as 
certamly  among  the  sciences  as  astronomy  itself;  but  who, 
little  in  earnest  in  their  religion,  are  quite  ready  enough, 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  38& 

•vrhen  they  find  theologians  asserting  the  irreconcilability 
of  the  geologic  doctrines  with  those  of  Scripture,  to  believe 
them ;  nay,  not  only  so,  but  to  repeat  the  assertion.  It  is 
not  fashional)le  in  the  present  age  openly  to  avow  infidelity, 
save  mayhap  in  some  modified  rationalistic  or  pantheistic 
form ;  but  in  no  age  did  the  thing  itself  exist  more  exten- 
sively ;  and  the  number  of  individuals  is  very  great  who, 
while  they  profess  an  outward  respect  for  revelation,  have 
no  serious  quarrel  with  the  class  who,  in  their  blind  zeal  in 
its  behalf,  are  in  reality  i;ndermining  its  foundations.  Nor 
are  there  avowed  infidels  awanting  who  also  make  common 
cause  with  the  party  so  far  as  to  assert  that  the  results  of 
geologic  discovery  conflict  irreconcilably  with  the  Mosaic 
account  of  creation.  But  there  is  yet  another  class,  com- 
posed of  respectable  and  able  men,  who,  fi-om  the  natural 
influence  of  their  acquirements  and  talents,  are  perhaps 
more  dangerous  allies  still,  and  whom  we  find  represented 
by  writers  such  as  Mr.  Babbage  and  the  Rev.  Baden 
Powell.  It  is  held  by  both  these  accomplished  men,  that 
it  is  in  vain  to  attempt  reconciling  the  Mosaic  writings 
with  the  geologic  discoveries :  botb  are  intimately  ac- 
quainted with  the  evidence  adduced  by  the  geologist,  and 
entertain  no  doubt  Avhatever  regarding  what  it  establishes ; 
but  though  in  the  main  friendly  to  at  least  the  moral 
sanctions  of  the  New  Testament,  botb  virtually  set  aside 
the  Mosaic  cosmogony ;  the  one  (Mr.  Babbage)  on  the 
professed  grounds  that  we  really  cannot  arrive  with  any 
certainty  at  the  meaning  of  that  old  Hebrew  introduction 
to  the  Scriptures  in  which  the  genesis  of  things  is  described  ; 
and  the  other  (Mr.  Powell)  on  the  assumption  that  that 
introduction  is  but  a  mere  picturesque  myth  or  parable,  as 
little  scientifically  true  as  the  parables  of  our  Saviour  or  of 
Nathan  the  seer  are  historically  so.  Now,  I  cannot  think 
that  the  anti-geologists  are  quite  in  the  place  in  which  they 
33* 


390  THE   DISCOVERABLE 

either  ought  or  intend  to  be  when  engaged  virtually  in 
making:  common  cause  with  either  of  these  latter  classes.* 
Be  this  as  it  may,  however,  it  may  be  not  uninstructive, 
and  perhaps  not  wholly  unamusing,  to  examine  Avhat  the 
claims  really  are  of  some  of  our  later  anti-geologists  to  be 
recognized  as  the  legitimate  and  qualified  censors  of  geolo- 
gic fact  or  inference.  It  Avill  be  seen,  that  in  the  passage 
which  I  have  quoted  from  Turrettine,  the  theologian,  in 
three  of  his  five  divisions,  restricts  himself  to  the  theologic 
province,  and  that  when  in  his  own  proper  sphere  even  his 
errors  are  respectable ;  but  that  in  the  two  concluding 
divisions  he  passes  into  the  province  of  the  natural  philoso- 
pher, and  that  there  his  respectability  ceases  for  the  time, 
and  he  becomes  eminently  ridiculous.  The  anti-geologists, 
—  men  of  considerably  smaller  calibre  than  the  massive 
Dutch  divine  of  tlie  seventeenth  century,  —  also  enter  into 
a  field  not  their  own.  Passing  from  the  theologic  prov- 
ince, they  obtrude  into  that  of  the  geologist,  and  settle 

*  The  very  different  terms  -which  Mr.  Powell  employs  in  characterizing 
the  anti-geologists,  from  those  which  he  makes  use  of  in  denouncing  the 
men  honestly  bent  on  reconciling  the  enunciations  of  revelation  with  the 
findings  of  geologic  science, — a  class  which  included  in  the  past,  divines 
such  as  Clialmcrs,  Buckland,  and  Pj-e  Smith,  and  comprises  divines  such 
as  Hitchcock  and  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  now, — is  worthy  of  being 
noted.  In  two  sermons,  "  Cliristianity  without  Judaism,"  written  by  this 
clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England,  to  show  that  all  days  of  the  week 
are  alike,  and  the  Christian  Sabbath  a  mere  blunder,  I  find  the  following 
passage :  — "  Some  divines  have  consistently  rejected  all  geology  and  all 
science  as  profane  and  carnal;  and  some  even,  when  pretending  to  call 
themselves  men  of  science,  have  stooped  to  the  miserable  policy  of  tam- 
pering with  the  truth,  investing  the  real  facts  in  false  disguises,  to  cringe 
to  the  prejudices  of  the  many,  and  to  pen'crt  science  into  a  seeming  ac- 
cordance with  popular  prepossessions."  I  cannot  believe  that  this  will  be 
regarded  as  justifiable  hmguage :  it  seems  scarce  worthy  of  a  man  of 
science  ;  and  will,  I  fear,  only  be  accepted  as  good  in  evidence  that  the 
odium  theologicum  is  not  restricted  to  what  is  termed  the  orthodox  side  of 
the  Church. 


AND    THE    REVEALED.  391 

against  him,  apparently  after  a  few  minutes'  consideration, 
or  as  mere  special  pleaders,  questions  on  which  he  has  been 
concentrating  the  patient  study  and  directing  the  laborious 
explorations  of  years.  And  an  exhibition  by  specimen  of 
the  nonsense  to  which  they  have  in  this  way  committed 
themselves  in  their  haste,  may  not  be  wholly  uninstructive. 
But  I  must  defer  the  display  till  another  evening.  I  shall 
do  them  no  injustice;  but  I  trust  it  will  be  forgiven  rae 
should  I  exhibit,  as  they  have  exhibited  themselves,  a  class 
of  writers  to  whose  assaults  I  have  submitted  for  the  last 
fourteen  years  without  provocation  and  without  reply. 


LECTURE  TENTH. 

THE   GEOLOGY  OF  THE  ANTI-GEOLOGISTS. 

It  has  been  well  remarked,  that  that  writer  would 
be  equally  in  danger  of  error  who  would  assign  very  ab- 
struse motives  for  the  conduct  of  great  bodies  of  men,  or 
very  obvious  causes  for  the  great  phenomena  of  nature. 
The  motives  of  the  masses,  —  on  a  level  always  with  the 
average  comprehension,  —  are  never  abstruse ;  the  causes 
of  the  jDhenomena,  on  the  other  hand,  are  never  obvious. 
And  when  these  last  are  hastily  sought  after,  not  from  any 
devotion  to  scientific  truth,  or  any  genuine  love  of  it,  but 
for  some  purpose  of  controversy,  Ave  may  receive  it  as  a 
sure  and  certain  fact  that  they  will  not  be  found.  Some 
mere  plausibility  will  be  produced  instead,  bearing  on  its 
front  an  obviousness  favorable  mayhap  to  its  reception  for 
the  time  by  the  vulgar,  but  in  reality  fatal  to  its  claims  in 
the  estimate  of  all. deep  thinkers;  while  truth  Avill  mean- 
while lie  concealed  far  below,  in  the  bottom  of  her  well, 
until  patiently  solicited  forth  by  some  previously  unth ought 
of  process,  in  the  character  of  some  AvhoUy  imanticipated 
result.  Such,  in  the  history  of  science,  has  been  the  course 
and  character  of  error  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  actual  dis- 
covery on  the  other :  the  error  has  been  always  compara- 
tively obvious,  —  the  discovery  unexpected  and  abstruse. 
And  as  men  descend  in  the  scale  of  accomijlishment  or 
intellect,  a  nearer  and  yet  nearer  approximation  takes  place 
between    their    conceptions  of  the    causes  of  the    occult 


THE   GEOLOGY   OF   ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.        393 

processes  of  nature,  and  the  common  and  obvious  motives 
which  influence  large  masses  of  their  fellows;  until  at 
length  the  sublime  contrivances  of  the  universe  sink,  in 
their  interpretation  of  them,  into  the  clumsy  expedients  of 
a  bunglmg  mechanism. 

Tested  by  their  reading  of  the  phenomena  on  this  prin- 
ciple, we  find  cin-ious  gradations  between  the  higher  and 
the  humbler  orders  of  minds.  The  vortices  of  Descartes, 
for  instance,  involve  but  a  simple  idea,  that  might  have 
been  struck  out  by  almost  any  individual  of  a  tolerably 
lively  fancy,  who  had  walked  by  the  side  of  a  winding 
river,  and  seen  sticks  and  straws  revolving  in  its  eddies. 
But  no  fixncy,  however  active,  or  no  reach  of  mere  com- 
mon sense,  however  respectable,  could  have  originated,  or 
conducted  to  a  successful  conclusion,  that  profound  con- 
templation into  which  Newton  fell  in  the  garden  of  Wools- 
thorpe,  when  he  saw  the  loosened  apple  drop  from  the 
tree,  and  succeeded  in  demonstrating  that  the  planets  are 
retained  in  their  orbits  by  the  same  law  which  impels  a 
falling  pebble  towards  the  ground.  So  little  obvious,  in- 
deed, was  the  Newtonian  scheme,  that  most  of  the  con- 
temporary generation  of  philosophers,  —  some  of  them, 
such  as  Fontenelle  and  his  brother  academicians  of  France, 
men  of  no  mean  standing,  —  died  rejecting  it.  And  the 
objections  of  Turrettine  to  the  motion  of  the  earth  on  its 
axis  are,  we  find,  still  more  obvious  than  even  the  idea  of 
the  vortices.  It  does  at  first  seem  natural  enough  to  sup- 
pose, that  if  the  earth's  surface  be  speeding  eastwards  at 
the  rate  of  several  hundred  miles  in  the  hour  (a  thousand 
miles  at  the  equator),  the  birds  which  flutter  over  it  should 
be  somewhat  hi  danger  of  being  left  behind ;  and  that 
atoms  and  down  flakes  floating  in  the  atmosphere  in  a  time 
of  calm,  instead  of- appearing,  as  they  often  do,  either  in  a 
state  of  rest,  or  moving  with  equal  freedom  in  every  direc- 


394  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

tion,  ought  to  be  seen  hurrying  westwards,  as  if  puffed  by 
the  breath  of  a  toi-nado.  Such  an  objection  must  for  a 
time  have  appeared  as  just  as  it  seems  obvious,  especially 
in  one's  study  on  a  Saturday  night,  with  much  of  one's  lec- 
ture still  to  write,  and  the  Sabbath  too  near  to  permit  of 
verification  or  experiment.  Fontenelle,  however,  though 
he  could  not  get  over  the  difficulty  of  conceiving  how  the 
same  gravitation  which  made  a  stone  fall  also  kept  the 
moon  in  its  place,  fairly  surmounted  that  Avhich  puzzled 
Turrettine  ;  and  in  his  "  Plurality  of  Worlds,"  —  a  publi- 
cation of  the  same  age  as  the  "  Compendium  Theologica," 
—  he  makes  his  Marchioness  surmount  it  too.  "  '  But  I 
have  a  difficulty  to  solve,'  he  represents  the  lady  as  saying, 
'  and  you  must  be  serious.  As  the  earth  moves,  the  air 
changes  every  moment ;  so  we  breathe  the  air  of  another 
country.'  'Not  at  all,'  replied  I;  'for  the  air  which  encom- 
passes the  earth  follows  with  us,  and  turns  with  us.  Plave 
you  not  seen  the  labors  of  the  silkworm?  The  shell  or 
cocoon  which  it  weaves  around  itself  with  so  much  art  is 
of  a  down  very  loose  and  soft ;  and  so  the  earth,  which  is 
solid,  is  covered,  from  the  surface  twenty  leagues  upwards, 
with  a  kind  of  down,  which  is  the  air,  and,  like  the  shell  of 
the  silkworm,  turns  along  with  it.' "  Even  Turrettine, 
however,  was  as  far  in  advance  of  some  of  our  contemners 
of  science  in  the  present  day,  as  Fontenelle  was  in  advance 
of  Turrettine,  or  Newton  in  advance  of  Fontenelle.  The 
old  theologian  could  scarce  have  held,  with  a  hving  ecclesi- 
astic of  the  Romish  Church  in  Ireland,  Father  Cullen,  that 
the  sun  is  possibly  only  a  fathonT  in  diameter;  or  have 
asserted  with  a  most  Pi'otestant  lecturer  who  addressed  an 
audience  in  Edinburgh  little  more  than  three  years  ago, 
that,  though  God  created  all  the  wild  animals,  it  was  the 
devil  who  made  the  flesh-eaters  among  them  fierce  and  car- 
nivorous ;   and,  of  course,  shortened  their  bowels,  length- 


THE    AXTI-GEOLOGISTS.  395 

ened  their  teeth,  and  stuck  formidable  claM's  into  the  points 
of  their  digits.*  Further,  the  error  of  Turrettine  was  but 
that  of  Ins  age,  whereas  our  modern  decriers  of  scieutilic 
fact  and  inference  are  always  men  greatly  in  the  rear  of 
theirs,  and  as  far  inferior  to  the  ancient  asscrtors  of  the  same 
errors  as  the  few  untutored  jDeasants  and  fishermen  of  our 
own  time,  located  in  remote  parts  of  the  country,  who  still 
retain  the  old  faith  in  Avitchcraft,  are  inferior  to  the  great 
lawyers,  poets,  and  divines,  —  the  Fairfaxes,  Henry  Mores, 
Judge  Halescs,  and  Sir  George  Mackenzies,  —  who  in  the 
seventeenth  century  entertained  a  similar  belief  And  so  it 
may  seem  somewhat  idle  work  to  take  any  jiains  in  "  scat- 
tering" such  a  "rear  of  darkness  thhi"  as  this  forlorn  pha- 
lanx composes.  "Let  them  alone,"  said  a  lunatic  in  the 
lucid  fit,  to  a  soldier  who  had  told  him,  when  asked  why 
he  carried  a  sword,  that  it  was  to  kill  his  enemies,  —  "let 
them  alone,  and  they  will  all  die  of  themselves."  But 
though  very  inconsiderable,  there  is  a  comparatively  large 
proportion  of  the  class  perilously  posted,  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  in  what  used  to  be  termed  of  old  in  Scotland 


*  The  gentleman  here  referred  to  lectured  no  later  than  October,  1853, 
against  the  doctrines  of  the  geologists  ;  and  modestly  chose  as  the  scene 
of  his  Ial)ors  the  city  of  Hutton  and  Phiyfair.  What  he  set  himself 
specially  to  "  demonstrate"  was,  as  he  said,  that  the  geologic  "  theories  as 
to  antiquity  of  the  earth,  successive  eras,  &c.,  were  not  only  fallacious  and 
unphilosophical,  but  rendered  nugatory  the  authoritj'  of  the  sacred  Scrip- 
tures." Not  only,  however,  did  he  exert  himself  in  demolishing  the  geol- 
ogists as  infidel,  but  he  denounced  also  as  unsound  the  theology  of  good 
old  Isaac  Watts.    The  lines  taught  us  in  our  infancy,  — 

"  Let  clogs  delight  to  bark  and  bite, 
For  God  hath  made  them  so," 

were,  he  remarked,  decidedly  hetei-odox.     They  ought  to  have  run  In- 
stead, — 

"  Let  dogs  delight  to  bark  and  bite, 
&itan  hath  made  them  so  "  Hi 


396  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

"the  chair  of  verity;"  and  there  they  sometimes  succeed 
in  doing  harm,  all  unwittingly,  not  to  the  science  which 
they  oppose,  but  to  the  religion  Avhich  they  profess  to 
defend.  I  Avas  not  a  little  struck  lately  by  finding  in  a 
religious  periodical  of  the  United  States,  a  worthy  Episco- 
palian clergyman  bitterly  complaining,  that  whenever  his 
sense  of  duty  led  him  to  denounce  from  his  pulpit  the 
gross  infidelity  of  modern  geology,  he  could  see  an  unbe- 
lievinsr  srrin  risinsr  on  the  faces  of  not  a  few  of  his  consrre- 
gation.  Alas!  who  can  doubt  that  such  ecclesiastics  as 
this  good  clergyman  must  virtually  be  powerful  preachers 
on  the  skeptical  side,  to  all  among  their  people  who,  with 
intelligence-  enough  to  appreciate  the  geologic  evidence, 
are  still  unsettled  in  their  minds  respecting  that  of  the 
Christian  faith.  And  so  on  this  consideration  alone  it  may 
be  found  not  uninstructive  to  devote  the  address  of  the 
present  evening  to  an  exposure  of  the  errors  and  nonsense 
of  our  modern  anti-ijeolosrists,  —  the  true  successors  and 
representatives,  in  the  passing  age,  of  the  Franciscan  and 
Salamanca  doctors  of  the  fifteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies. 

Let  me  first  remark,  that  no  one  need  expect  to  be  origi- 
nal simply  by  being  absurd.  There  is  a  cycle  in  nonsense, 
as  certainly  as  in  opinion  of  a  more  solid  kind,  which  CA'er 
and  anon  brings  back  the  delusions  and  errors  of  an  earlier 
time :  the  follies  of  the  present  day  are  transcripts,  unwit- 
tingly produced,  and  Avith  of  course  a  fcAV  A'ariations,  of 
follies  which  existed  centuries  ago ;  and  it  seems  to  be  on 
this  principle,  —  a  consequence,  mayhap,  of  the  limited 
range  of  the  human  mind,  not  only  in  its  elucidations  ot 
tnith,  but  also  in  its  forms  of  error,  —  that  scarce  an  ex- 
planation of  geologic  phenomena  has  been  given  by  the 
anti-geologists  of  our  oAvn  times,  that  was  not  anticipated 
by  writers  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.     It 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  397 

was  held,  for  instance,  —  in  opposition  to  the  great  painter, 
Leonardo  da  Vinci,  who  flourished  early  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  was  one  of  the  first  who,  after  the  revival  of 
learning,  asserted  the  true  character  of  organic  remains,  — 
that  fossils  were  formed  in  the  rocks  through  the  j^lanetary 
influences,  or  a  certain  plastic  force  in  nature,  and  had 
never  entered  into  the  composition  of  living  creatures  or 
plants.  And  this  view  obtained  very  generally  till  about 
the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  when,  save  for  a 
brief  space  long  after,  in  the  times  of  Voltaire,  it  ceased 
to  be  regarded  as  any  longer  tenable.  Curiously  enough, 
however,  it  Avas  viitually  reproduced  by  one  of  the  extant 
anti-geologists,  —  a  clergyman  of  the  English  Church, — 
only  three  years  ago,  in  a  publication  written,  he  says,  to 
counteract  "the  immense  mischief  occasioned  by  the  infidel 
works  of  geologists,  especially  among  the  loicer  classes,''^ 
and  which  he  has  termed  "a  brief  and  complete  refuta- 
tion" of  their  "anti-scriptural  theory."*  "Fossils,"  says 
this  courageous  writer,  "were  not  necessarily  animated 
structures : "  some  of  them  were  in  all  probability  "  formed 
of  stone  from  the  very  first ; "  others,  of  inanimate  flesh 
and  bone.  "  The  mammoth  found  under  the  ice  in  arctic 
regions  had  not  necessarily  been  a  living  creature :  it  was 
created  under  the  ice,  and  then  preserved  in  that  peculiar 
form  of  preservation,  instead  of  being  transmuted  into 
stone,  like  the  rest  of  its  class."  Such  was  the  state  of 
keeping  of  this  famous  mammoth,  when  discovered  a  little 
ere  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  that,  as  I  had 
occasion  formerly  to  remark,  dogs  and  bears  fed  ujjon  its 
flesh ;  and  its  bones,  and  part  of  its  skin,  covered  with 
long  red  hair,  are  now  in  the  museum  of  Petersburg.     But 

*  "A  Brief  and  Complete  Refutation  of  the  Anti-Scriptural  Theory  of 
Geologists."     By  a  Clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England.     London: 
Werthelm  &  Macintosh.    1853. 
34 


398  THE    GEOLOGY   OF 

there  is  no  evidence  whatever,  according  to  this  writer, 
that  it  had  ever  been  a  living  creature  :  it  was  simply  a 
created  carcass.  All  organisms  are,  he  holds,  models  or 
archetypes,  fashioned  during  the  first  day  in  the  depths 
of  chaos,  to  typify  or  foreshadow  the  living  plants  and 
animals  that  were  to  be  called  into  existence  a  few  days 
later.  "  What,"  he  asks,  "  do  the  cocoa-nuts,  melons,  and 
gourds,  which  have  been  found  in  the  strata,  show,  but 
that  the  vegetable  had  its  perfect  archetype  in  chaos  as 
well  as  the  animal  ?  "  Nay,  further,  the  geologist  has  but 
got  into  the  apartment  in  Avhich  the  original  architect 
stored  up  his  plans  and  models,  —  many  of  them,  how- 
ever, rejected  ones.  For  "  though  every  animal  is  formed 
after  his  archetype,"  we  find  him  saying,  "the  converse 
is  not  true,  that  every  chaotic  structui-e  is  represented  by 
its  living  facsimiled  But  they  typify,  if  not  living  or- 
ganisms, much  more  important  things,  —  "  they  represent," 
says  our  writer,  "  the  land  of  the  shadow  of  death ; "  and 
the  strata  containing  them,  which  geologists  have  opened, 
are  symbolical  of  the  "gates  of  death."  "The  state  of 
preservation  in  which  most  fossils  are,  instead  of  having 
mouldered  away,  foreshadows  immortality.  The  grada- 
tion, too,  fi"om  the  organisms  whose  tyjies  are  said  to  he 
lost  or  destroyed,  and  confused  in  inmnnerable  heaps,  up 
to  the  perfect  and  complete  specimen,  is  no  fanciful  rep- 
resentation of  the  resurrection ;  while  the  isolated  bones 
and  parts  of  skeletons  which,  though  found  far  apart,  as 
they  were  created,  have  been  fitted  together  by  the  skill 
of  the  accomplished  anatomist,  give  assurance  of  the  fact 
that  our  scattered  dust — our  'membra  dixjecta — shall  come 
togetlier  at  the  sound  of  the  last  trump."  And  this  is 
"geology  on  Scripture  principles,"  soberly  expounded  by  a 
man  who  respects  facts,  while  he  gives  no  place  to  fancy. 
The  "English  clergyman"  then  goes  on  to  show  in  his 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  399 

pamphlet,  that  the  Coal  Measures  furnish  no  evidence  of 
the  earth's  antiquity.  They  were  formed,  he  says,  by  the 
finger  of  the  Creator,  "  hnmediately  and  at  once.  A  car- 
boniferous tree  of  gigantic  size  has  been  discovered,"  he 
adds,  "in  the  interior  of  the  earth,  of  such  a  shajjc  as 
entirely  to  prove  the  absurdity  of  a  theory  [that  of  the 
earth's  antiquity]  which  has  not  a  single  valid  argument  to 
support  it.  It  is  described  as  having  its  trunk  rising  i'rom 
the  earth  perpendicularly  ten  feet,  and  tlien  bending  over 
and  extending  horizontally  sixty  feet.  Now,  what  living 
tree  thus  lopsided  could  support  such  a  weight  in  such  a 
direction  ?  It  seems  to  have  been  created  on  purpose  to 
silence  the  horrid  blasphemies  of  geologists ;  for  it  proves 
to  a  demonstration,  that  the  upper,  nether,  and  surrounding 
matter  came  into  existence  Avith  it  at  the  same  instant ;  for 
how  else  could  it  have  been  presei'ved  in  such  a  position  ?  " 
The  triumph  secured  by  the  carboniferous  tree,  however, — 
though  it  does  not  seem  wholly  impossible  that  a  tree 
might  in  any  age  of  the  world  have  been  broken  over  some 
ten  feet  from  its  root,  and  bent  in  a  horizontal  position,  — 
seems  in  some  danger  of  being  neutralized,  as  we  read  on, 
by  the  circumstance  that  geologists  find  not  unfrequently, 
among  their  fossils,  the  dung  of  the  carnivorous  vertebrates, 
charged  in  many  instances  with  the  teeth,  bones,  and  scales 
of  the  creatures  on  which  they  had  preyed,  and  strongly 
impressed,  in  at  least  the  coprolites  of  the  larger  Palieozoio 
ganoids,  and  of  the  enaliosaurs  of  the  Secondary  period,  by 
the  screw-like  markings  of  a  spiral  intestine,  similar  in  form 
to  that  now  exemplified  by  the  sharks  and  rays.  And  in 
maintaining  his  hypothesis  that  most  fossils  are  mere  arche, 
types  —  mere  plans  or  models  —  of  existences  to  be,>the 
archetypal  dung  proves  rather  a  stumbling-block,  and  the 
English  clergyman  waxes  exceedingly  wroth  against  the 
geologists.     "  We  cannot,"  he  says,  "  believe  in  such  things 


400  THEGEOLOGYOF 

as  coprolites.  They  are  only  a  curious  form  of  matter 
commandecl  by  Him  Avho  has  made  the  flower  to  assume 
all  i(hapes  as  well  as  all  hues.  He  avIio  would  not  allow  so 
much  as  a  tool  to  be  lifted  up  on  tlie  stones  that  composed 
his  altar,  would  certainly  not  allow  the  'loork  of  animals  to 
compose  his  creation,  much  less,  then,  their  dung.  The 
geological  assertion  that  the  Creator  of  this  world  formed 
it  in  some  parts  of  coprolites  savoi's  very  much  of  Satan  or 
Beelzebub,  the  god  of  dung.  Geologists  could  scarcely 
have  made  a  more  unfortunate  selt-refuting  assertion  than 
this."  I  question,  liowever,  whether  the  clergyman  does 
well  to  be  angry  with  tiie  geologists  here.  That  fossils  are 
mere  models  and  archetypes,  is  his  hypothesis,  not  theirs: 
and  so  it  is  lie  himself  who  is  answerable,  not  they,  for 
what  lie  deems  the  impiety  of  the  archetypal  dung.  His 
/"next  statement  is  of  a  kind  suited  somewhat  to  astonish 
the  practical  geologist.  "7i  is  the  constant  language  of 
geologists,''''  he  says,  in  giving  the  result  of  their  discoveries, 
'■'■that  no  young  have  heen  found!  1 1  while  the  larger  fossils 
have  been  detected  isolated,  or  in  the  company  of  others, 
all  differing  in  kind."  "Archetypal  resemblances  of  ova 
have  been  found,  and  such  things  as  moths  •  but  these  are 
distinct  and  perfect  in  their  kind.  The  occurrence  of  the 
young,  which  are  imperfect,  is  a  fact  which  has  not  been, 
and  never  can  be,  established;  therefore  it  never  can  he 
j[>roved  that  this  xcorld  has  had  a  longer  existence  than  six 
thousand  years.''''  It  is  "  the  constant  language  of  geolo- 
gists" that  "no  young  have  been  found"  in  the  fossil  state. 
Amazing  assertion!  "Therefore  it  never  can  be  proved 
that  this  world  has  had  a  longe.-  existence  than  six  thou- 
sand years."  Astonishing  inference !  There  is  not  a  tyro 
in  geology  who  ever  looked  over  a  set  of  fossils,  or  ever 
spent  an  hour  in  exploring  a  fossiliferous  deposit,  who  does 
not  know  that  the  remains  of  organisms  in  every  stage  of 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  401 

growth  may  be  found  lying  side  by  side  in  the  same  bed,  — 
that  almost  every  museum  contains  its  series  of  molhiscs, 
crustaceans,  fishes,  and  corals,  formed  to  illustrate  species 
in  tlieir  various  stages  of  growth, — that,  in  especial,  among 
the  ammonites  of  the  Secondary  ages,  and  the  trilobites 
of  the  Palaeozoic  ones,  these  series  have  been  ma,de  with 
great  care,  in  order  to  prevent  the  erroneous  multiplication 
of  species,  —  and  that,  in  short,  every  richly  fossiliferous 
stratum  in  the  earth's  crust  repeats  the  lesson  so  often 
deduced  from  our  churcfiyards,  where  graves  of  all  sizes, 
from  that  of  the  infant  of  a  day  to  that  of  the  aged  adult, 
may  be  found  lying  side  by  side.  What  the  English 
clergyman  represents  as  "  the  constant  language  of  geolo- 
gists," is  a  language  which  no  geologist  ever  yet  used,  or 
ever  will.  And  his  inference  is  in  eveiy  way  worthy  of 
his  premises.  The  flourish  with  which  he  concludes  his 
pamphlet  would  be  infinitely  anausing  had  his  language 
been  just  a  little  less  solemn.  "The  writer  of  the  above 
remarks  has  felt  it  his  duty,"  we  find  him  saying,  "to 
publish  them,  not  only  to  refute  the  arguments  of  the  vain 
and  puff*ed-up  geologist,  who  fimcies  himself  wiser  than 
God,  but  also  to  prevent,  by  God's  blessing,  the  evil  that 
must  ensue  from  tampering  with  the  sacred  text.  And 
now,  what  has  Satan  to  say?  Why,  the  tables  ake 
TURNED.  Let  men  beware.  Why  did  not  the  British 
Association,  at  their  twenty-third  meeting,  in  September, 
1853,  acknowledge  their  error  as  a  body,  in  applauding  so 
loudly  the  assertion  of  one  of  their  geological  members  at  a 
previous  meeting,  that  this  earth  existed  ages  before  man  ? 
They  may  now  have  the  satisfaction  of  thinking  that,  in 
spite  of  themselves,  those  impious  plaudits  have  been  turned 
by  the  wrath  of  God  into  hisses."  Strange  as  the  fact  may 
seem,  this  passage  was  written,  not  in  grave  joke,  but  in 
serious  earnest. 


402  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

The  belief  that  fossil  remains  had  never  entered  into  the 
composition  of  living  organisms,  but  had  been  formed  in 
the  rocks  ji»st  as  Ave  find  them,  gradually  gave  place,  diu'ing 
the  seventeenth  century,  to  the  belief  that  they  were  the 
debris  of  the  Xoachian  Dehige,  and  evidences,  as  they 
occurred  in  almost  every  known  country,  and  were  found 
on  the  top  of  lofty  hills,  of  at  once  its  universality  and 
the  height  to  which  its  waters  had  prevailed.  And  this 
hy}X)thesis,  like  the  others,  has  been  reproduced  by  some 
of  the  anti-geologists  of  the  present  day.  The  known  fact, 
—  a  result  of  modern  science,  —  that  the  several  formations 
(always  invariable  in  their  order  of  succession)  have  their 
groups  of  organisms  peculiar  to  themselves,  has,  however, 
interposed  a  difficulty  from  Avhich  the  earlier  cosmogonists 
were  exempt.  It  has  become  necessary  to  show  that  the 
Noachian  cataclysm  was  strangely  selective,  in  burying  in 
the  beds  which  it  is  held  by  the  class  to  have  formed,  now 
one  gi-oup  of  plants  and  animals,  now  quite  another  group, 
and  anon  yet  another  and  different  group  still ;  and  all  this 
many  times  repeated  with  such  nice  care  and  discrimination, 
that  not  a  single  organism  of  the  lower  beds  is  to  be  de- 
tected in  the  middle  ones,  nor  yet  a  single  organism  of 
either  the  middle  or  lower  in  the  beds  that  lie  above. 
Even  this  task,  however,  just  a  little  lightened  by  here 
and  there  a  suppression  of  the  ficts,  has  been  attempted  by 
the  redoubtable  Dean  of  York.*  Fire  and  Avater  Avere,  he 
conceives,  equally  agents  in  the  great  catastroi)he  that 
destroyed  the  old  world,  —  a  circumstance  Avhich,  if  true, 
would  have  furnished  Avith  an  admirable  aj^ology  the  class 
of  persons  Avho,  according  to  the  Avit,  Avould  have  cried  out 
"Fire,  fire,"  at  the  deluge.  The  dean  conceives  that  at 
the  commencement  of  the  Flood,  Avlicii   torrents  of  rain 

*  Newspaper  Kcport  of  Meeting  of  the  British  Association  held  at  York 
in  September,  1844 


THE   ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  403 

were  falling  upon  the  land,  numerous  submarine  volcanoes 
began  to  disgorge  their  molten  contents  into  the  sea, 
destroying  the  fish,  and  all  other  marine  productions,  by 
the  intensity  of  the  heat,  and  at  the  same  time  locking 
them  up  in  strata  formed  of  the  eru})ted  matter.  This 
process  took  place  ere  the  land  floods,  laden  with  the  sjjoils 
of  island  and  continent,  and  the  accompanying  mud  and 
sand,  could  arrive  at  the  remoter  depths ;  which,  however, 
they  ultimately  reached,  and  formed  a  second  formation, 
overlying  the  first.  There  were  thus  two  formations  origi- 
nated,—  a  marine  formation  below,  and  a  terrestrial  or 
fresh  water  formation  above ;  but  as  these  two  deposits 
could  not  be  made  to  include  all  the  geological  phenomena 
with  which  even  the  dean  was  acquainted,  he  had  nicely  to 
parcel  out  the  work  of  his  A'olcanoes  on  the  one  hand,  and 
that  of  his  land  floods  on  the  other,  into  separate  fits  or 
paroxysms,  each  of  Mhich  served  to  entomb  a  distinct  class 
of  creatures,  and  oiiginate  a  definite  set  of  rocks.  Thus, 
the  first  work  of  his  volcanoes  was  to  form  the  Transition 
sei'ies  of  strata.  As  a  commencement  of  the  whole,  the 
internal  fire  blew  up  from  the  bed  of  the  ocean,  in  tremen- 
dous explosions,  vast  quantities  of  pulverized  rock  mixed 
with  clay,  'which,  slowly  subsiding,  and  covering  up,  as  it 
sank,  shells,  stone-lilies,  and  trilobites,  formed  the  Silurian 
rocks.  A  second  explosion  brought  up  the  A'ents  of  the 
volcanoes  to  the  level  of  the  ocean ;  and  while  the  Old  Red 
Sandstone,  thus  produced,  and  charged  with  fish  killed  by 
the  heat,  was  settling  on  their  flanks,  they  themselves,  as 
if  seized  by  black  vomit,  began  to  disgorge  in  vast  quanti- 
ties, coal  in  the  liquid  state.  Very  opportunely,  just  ere  it 
cooled,  emormous  quantities  of  vegetables,  waslied  out  to 
sea  by  the  extraordinary  land  floods,  were  precipitated 
immediately  OA'er  it ;  and,  sticking  in  its  viscid  surface,  or 
sinking   into  its   substance   through   cracks  fonned  in   it 


404  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

during  the  cooling,  they  became  attached  to  it  in  such 
considerable  masses,  as  to  lead  long  after  to  the  very  mis- 
taken notion  that  coal  itself  was  of  vegetable  origin.  Then 
there  ensued  another  deposit  of  red  sand,  with  salt  boiled 
into  it ;  and  then  a  deposition  of  lime  and  clay.  The  land 
floods  still  continuing,  the  great  Sauroid  reptiles  which  had 
haunted  the  rivers  and  lower  plains  began  to  yield  to  their 
force,  and  their  carcasses,  floating  out  to  sea,  sank  amid  the 
slowly  subsiding  lime  and  clay,  now  known  as  the  Lias. 
The  volcanoes  too  Avere  still  very  active ;  and  the  lighter 
shells,  ammonites,  and  the  like,  which  had  been  previously 
bobbing  up  and  down  on  the  boiling  surface,  now  sank  by 
myriads;  for  the  viscid  argillaceous  mud  thrown  up  by 
the  fiery  ebullitions  from  beneath  stuck  iiast  to  them,  and 
^dragged  them  down.  Then  came  the  formation  of  the 
Oolite,  rolled  into  little  egg-like  pellets  by  the  waves;  and 
last  of  all,  the  Green  sand  and  Chalk  ;  after  which  the 
w^aters  ran  off",  and  sank  into  the  deep  hollow  v.'hich  noAV 
forms  the  bed  of  the  ocean,  but  which  previous  to  the 
cataclysm  had  been  the  place  of  the  land.  The  dean,  as 
he  Avent  on,  fell  into  some  little  confusion  regarding  the 
true  place  of  some  of  his  animals,  such  as  the  megatherium, 
Avhich  arrived  in  his  arrangement  a  little  too  soon.  He 
spoke,  too  —  if  a  newspaper  report  is  to  be  credited  —  of  a 
heavy  creature  soon  overtaken  and  drowned  by  the  rising 
Avaters,  Avhich  he  termed  the  pterogactylus^  and  which  does 
not  seem  to  have  turned  up,  either  in  the  body  or  out  of  it, 
since  it  Avas  lost  on  that  memorable  occasion,  Xor  did  he 
make  any  provision  in  his  arrangement  for  the  formation 
of  the  various  Tertiary  deposits.  But  then  all  these  are 
slight  matters,  that  could  be  very  easily  Avoven  into  his 
hypothesis.  As  the  flood  rose  along  the  hill  sides,  first 
such  of  the  Aveightier  animals  Avould  perish  as  could  not 
readily  climb   steep   acclivities ;   and  then   the   oxen,  the 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS,  405 

horses,  the  deer,  and  the  goats,  with  the  Hghter  carnivora, 
who,  as  they  would  die  last,  —  some  of  them  not  until  the 
final  disappeai-ance  of  the  hill-tops,  —  would  of  course  be 
entombed  in  the  upper  deposits.  Such  is  the  hypothesis 
of  the  Dean  of  York,  —  a  hypothesis  of  which  it  may  be 
justly  affirmed,  that  it  is  well  nigh  as  ingenious  as  the 
circumstances  of  the  case  permit,  and  against  which  little 
else  can  be  urged  than  that  it  must  seem  rather  cumbrous 
and  fanciful  to  the  class  who  do  not  know  geolog}',  and,  on 
the  whole,  somewhat  in.idequate  to  the  class  who  do. 

The  Flood,  however,  is  not  left  to  do  the  whole  geologic 
work,  by  even  such  of  the  anti-geologists  as  assign  to  it  the 
largest  share.  A  great  unrecorded  convulsion  which  ac- 
companied the  Fall  is  held  by  some  of  their  number  to  have 
greatly  assisted,  by  laying  down  the  older  formations  of  the 
fossiliferous  rocks;  and  very  much  is  said  to  have. been 
done  during  the  extended  antediluvian  period  that  suc- 
ceeded it.  One  of  perhaps  the  most  amusing  though  least 
known  of  the  writers  that  take  this  special  view  is  a  Scotch- 
man, resident  in  a  secluded  provincial  town,  who  for  the  last 
twelve  or  fifteen  years  has  been  printing  ingenious  little 
books  against  the  infidel  geologists,  and  getting  letters  of 
similar  character  inserted  in  such  of  our  country  newspapers 
as  are  ambitious  of  rendering  their  science  equal  to  their 
literature.  And  from  the  great  trouble  which  he  has  taken 
with  the  writings  of  the  individual  who  now  addresses  you, 
he  seems  to  regard  them  as  peculiarly  unsolid  and  danger- 
ous. According  to  this  profound  cosmogonist,  the  world 
before  the  Fall  was  rather  more  than  twice  its  present  size, 
and  very  artificially  constructed.*     It  was  a  liollow  ball, 

*  See  "  Primary  and  Present  State  of  the  Sclar  System,  particularly  of 
our  own  Planet;"  and  "  Exposure  of  the  Principles  of  Modern  GcoIog\'." 
By  P.  M'Farlane,  Author  of  the  "  Primary  and  Present  State  of  the  Solar 
System."    Edinburgh :  Thomas  Grant. 


406  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

supported  inside  by  a  framework  of  metal  wrought  into 
hexagonal  reticulations,  somewhat  like  the  framework  of 
the  great  iron  bridge  over  the  river  Wear  at  Sunderland  ; 
and  which  had  an  ojjen  space  in  its  centre,  occupied  by  a 
vast  tubular  furnace  lying  direct  south  and  north,  which 
threw  out  huge  volumes  of  flame  towards  the  poles.  Over 
the  reticulated  framework  there  rose  a  great,  thick  firma- 
ment of  metal,  which  formed  the  inner  shell  of  the  globe ; 
over  the  metal  there  lay  a  considerably  thicker  shell  of 
granite ;  and  over  the  granite,  a  thinner  shell  of  a  substance 
not  specified,  perhaps  not  known,  but  which,  from  its  being 
completely  water-tight,  served  tlie  purpose  of  the  layer  of 
asphalt  or  terra  cotta  which  the  architect  spreads  over  his 
flat  roofs,  or  on  the  tops  of  his  sloping  terraces,  afterwards 
to  be  covered  Avith  soil  and  laid  out  into  gardens.  Such,  it 
seem^,  was  that  portion  of  the  fi-amework  of  our  great  globe 
which  corresponded  to  the  hollow  lath  and  plaster  fj-ame- 
work  of  the  little  globes  used  in  schools ;  while  its  upper- 
most layer,  —  correspondent  with  the  slips  of  the  map 
which  the  geographer  pastes  on  the  model  and  then  var- 
nishes, —  was  formed  of  earth  and  water,  economically  laid 
out  into  "most  useful  and  tasteful  configurations," — the 
earth  into  pretty  little  rising  grounds  and  valleys,  and  the 
water  into  seas  and  lakes  of  no  great  extent,  but  wliicli 
formed,  from  their  very  handsome  combinations,  "  a  terra- 
queous surfiice  all  over  perfectly  pakadisaical."  Over 
this  exquisitely  neat  earth  there  lay  an  enveloping  atmos- 
phere, greatly  thinner  and  less  dense  than  the  air  at  present 
is,  and  incapable,  in  consequence,  of  being  agitated  by 
storms ;  while  directly  over  the  northern  and  southern  ex- 
tremities of  the  Avorld  tlie  polar  auroras,  now  so  fitful  and 
broken,  extended  in  a  permanent  arch,  and  gave  light, 
during  the  long  dark  winters,  to  tlie  reiiions  Ivinc:  below. 
And  as  warmth  was  as  necessary  to  the  paradisaical  perfec- 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  407 

tion  of  these  districts  as  light,  they  received  the  necessary 
heat  from  tlie  great  double-acting  furnace  in  the  interior, 
whick,  belching  out  flames  at  both  ends,  acted  powerfully 
against  the  polar  portions  of  the  metallic  ci-ust  or  shell,  and 
thus  maintained  the  necessary  glow  in  the  absence  of  the 
sun,  on  the  princii)le  on  which  a  frying-pan  or  Scotch  girdle 
is  heated  when  placed  by  the  cookmaid  over  the  fire.    And 
such,  according  to  this  excellent  world-fashioner  and  very 
zealous  man,  was  the  construction  of  that  unblighted  and 
unbroken  earth  which  was  of  old  pronounced  to  be  "  very 
good."     The  Fall,  however,  produced  a  most  remarkable 
and  singularly  disastrous  change.     The  earth  was  somehow 
partially  crushed  and  broken,  contemporaneously  with  the 
event,  —  like  a  strong  fishing  basket  when  it  accidentally 
falls  from  a  coach-top  under  the  wheel ;    and,  from  a  most 
interesting  colored  copperplate  that  illustrates  one  of  the 
author's  treatises  (for  he  draws  as  well  as  he  Avrites),  the 
exact  damage  which  it  received  can  be  minutely  estimated. 
The   interior  network  was  compressed    into   all   sorts   of 
irregular  polygons;  the  iron   firmament  was   broken   into 
great  fragments,  —  some  of  which  may  be  seen  in  the  i)rint 
hanging   down   into   the   hollow  interior,  like  patches   of 
broken   plaster  dangling  from  a  ceiling,  suspended  by  the 
hairs  originally  employed  to  give  the  necessary  tenacity  to 
the  lime.     The  great  granitic  shell  was  also  broken,  but 
broken  so  nicely,  on  the  principle  of  the  arch,  that  the  pieces 
remained  in  nearly  their  original  places.     Finally,  vast  rents 
are  seen  to  occur  in  the  cement  and  soil  of  the  outer  crust ; 
and  these  great  rents,  Avhich  must  have  formed  enormous 
gulfs  and  deep  interminable  ravines,  were  destined,  it  would 
seem,  to  perform   a  most   important   part   in   the   future 
geology  of  the  globe.     Forming  impassable  lines  of  demar- 
cation between  the  several  portions  into  Avhich  they  broke 
up  the  earth's  surface,  they  imprisoned  the  recently  created 


408  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

animals  in  separate  groups,  kept  as  completely  from  mixing 
together  as  the  fallow-deer  of  one  loftily-walled  park  are 
kept  from  mixing  with  the  white  oxen  of  another  loftily- 
walled  park,  or  as  the  kangaroos  or  duck-billed  quadrupeds 
of  Australia  are  kept  by  the  suri-ounding  ocean  from  mixing 
with  the  tigers  of  Sumatra  or  the  tortoises  of  Madagascar. 
I  employ  the  writer's  own  happy  illustration :  —  "  In  some 
places  these  fragments "  of  the  earth's  crust  "  would  be 
piled  more  or  less  above  each  other,  and  in  others  quite  de- 
tached and  isolated,  like  fragments  of  ice  on  the  bank  of  a 
river  after  a  thaw."  They  would  of  course  be  on  very  dif- 
ferent levels,  each  having,  as  I  have  said,  a  distinct  group 
of  animals  of  its  own  ;  and  when,  after  the  lapse  of  nearly 
two  thousand  years,  the  great  catastrophe  of  the  Flood 
came  on,  it  would  necessarily  find,  as  it  rose  along  the 
levels,  and  submerged  platform  after  platform  in  succession, 
a  different  and  yet  different  set  of  creatures  to  kill.  To 
borrow  from  the  description  of  this  ingenious  cosmogonist, 
"  those  on  the  lower  fragments  would  be  first  engulphed, 
and  their  races  completely  extinguished  from  off  the  sur- 
face, and  deposited  in  the  earth  ;  then  those  on  higher  and 
higher  upwards,  till  the  whole  became  submerged.  And 
we  have  only  to  suppose  that  man,  with  the  present  sur- 
vivors, were  those  that  occupied  one  of  the  higher  table- 
lands when  the  Flood  commenced  (and  of  course  in  that 
case  Noah  could  collect  into  the  ark  only  out  of  those  of  his 
own  country) ;  then  the  result  Avould  be,  that  man  and  his 
present  contemporaries  would  be  among  the  last  over- 
whelmed. This  will  sufficiently  account  for  the  fact  of  his 
and  their  remains  not  being  found  deep  in  the  earth. 

The  two  most  interesting  geological  facts  therefore, 
namely,  that  distinct  organisms  are  to  be  found  in  distinct 
formations  respectively ;  and  secondly,  that  no  remains  of 
man^  and  few  or  none  of  the  other  races  at  present  surviv- 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  409 

m^,  are  to  be  found  in  any  hut  comparatively  recent  form- 
ations^ —  these  two  grand  facts  of  geology,  Ave  say,  instead 
of  pointing  back  to  vast  cycles  of  ages  before  the  creation, 
seem  to  point  merely  to  the  peculiar  physical  circumstances 
of  the  fallen  planet  in  the  interval  between  those  two  event- 
ful stages  in  its  history,  the  Fall  and  Flood,  and  the  natural 
consequences  of  these  circumstances  in  causing  distinct 
divisions,  and  some  of  these  of  different  elevations,  among 
the  organic  living  creatures,  during  the  interval."  One 
other  circumstance  completes  this  really  original  and  beauti- 
ful hypothesis.  The  cosmogonist  holds  that  the  Flood,  — 
no  mere  tranquil  rising  of  the  waters,  as  some  suppose,  — 
was  accompanied  by  terrible  convulsions,  which  reduced  to 
utter  ruin  the  already  shattered  earth.  The  granitic  dome 
fell  inwards  upon  the  central  furnace ;  and  the  fires,  burst- 
ing outwards  under  the  enormous  pressure,  found  vent  at 
the  surface,  and  made  the  volcanoes.  And  this  collapsed 
and  diminished  world,  —  scarce  half  the  bulk  of  the  old  one, 

—  with  no  heating  furnace  under  its  polar  regions,  nor 
aught  save  the  merest  tatters  of  an  aurora  flitting  occasion- 
ally  over  them,  —  greatly  too  dense  in  itself,  and  sur- 
rounded by  a  greatly  too  dense  atmosphere,  —  with  its 
huge  mountains,  vast  oceans,  wide  steppes,  and  arid  deserts, 
with  its  snows,  its  frosts,  its  drenching  rains,  its  horrible 
tempests,  its  terrible  thunder  storms,  and  devastaiing  earth- 
quakes, —  all  alike  frightful  defects,  not  in  the  o  iginal  plan, 

—  is  not  only  unlike  the  primeval  world,  not  xicj  good,  or, 

unlike  the  antediluvian  world,  tolerably  good,  but  not  good 

at  all.     "  On  taking  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  geograjihical 

and  hydrographical  features  or  superficies  of  the  globe," 

says  this  bold  writer,  "any  unprejudiced  person  must  at 

once  admit,  that  in  either  of  these  departments  there  is 

scarce  a  trace  of  that  beautiful,  tasteful,  and  economical 

design  which  we  have  a  right  to  expect  from  the  admitted 
35 


410  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

qi;alities  of  the  great  Author,  and  his  avowed  object  in  the 
structure  and  report  of  it  when  newly  finished."  It  is 
added,  however,  that  "its  irresent  object.,  as  the  Siberia  — 
the  penal  settlement  —  of  expatriated  rebels,  it  is  in  its 
present  state  well  calculated  to  fulfil." 

It  may  be  worth  mentioning,  that  the  writer  who  sets 
himself  after  a  fishion  so  peculiar  to  assert  and  justify  the 
ways  of  Providence  against  the  geologists  resides  in  one  of 
the  loveliest  districts  in  Scotland,  —  a  district,  however, 
shaggy  with  rock,  and  overshadowed  by  great  mountains, 
and  occasionally  visited  by  earthquake  tremors,  and  both 
snow  and  thunder  storms,  and  so,  with  all  its  wild  beauty 
to  other  eyes,  merely,  I  must  suppose,  one  of  the  rougher 
districts  of  the  penal  Sibei'ia  in  his.  He  is,  indeed,  par- 
ticularly severe  upon  mountains ;  though  not,  as  he  tells  us, 
wholly  devoid  of  a  lurking  prejudice  in  their  favor.  But 
what  weak  prejudice  might  palliate  or  plead  for,  his  better 
judgment  condemns.  "See,"  says  this  judicious  writer, 
"  vast  distiicts  of  the  globe  disfigured  by  tremendous 
masses  of  rugged  and  almost  barren  mountains.  .  ,  What, 
cry  some,  would  you  bury  as  deformities  the  lofty  peak  and 
rugged  mountain  brow,  nature's  palaces,  —  generally  the 
grandest  and  most  sublime  objects  in  natural  scenery  !  We 
cordially  assure  the  reader  we  are  by  no  means  prejudiced 
against  these  grand  objects;  for  if  jorejudice  tee  have  on  the 
subject,  it  is  rather  on  the  other  side.  It  is  therefore  the 
force  of  evidence  alone  makes  us,  —  reluctantly  we  admit, 
—  give  up  these  to  rank  among  the  derangements  and 
deformities  of  nature.  She,  according  to  her  usual  taste 
and  economy.,  Avould  never  be  at  the  expense  of  rearing,  and 
that  upon  ground  that  might  have  othervnse  been  much 
better  occupied,  such  unwieldy,  useless  masses  of  matter, 
merely  for  the  sake  of  gratifying  the  taste  for  grandeur  and 
sublimity  in  a  few  of  her  sons,  nor,  indeed,  for  any  other 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  411 

use  ■we  ever  heard  ascribed  to  lliem.  .  .  According  to  our 
test,  a  rich  and  gently  undulatory  surface,  intersected  witli 
rivulets  and  sheets  of  water,  in  the  places  taken  \\\)  Ly  these 
elevations,  would  be  far  better,  as  combining  in  the  highest 
degree  the  utile  cum  dulce.''''  *  To  such  of  my  audience  as 
are  fomiliar  with  Dr.  Thomas  Burnet's  "  Sacred  Theory  of 
the  Earth"  (1684),  that  revolution  in  the  cycle  of  hypo- 
thesis to  which  I  have  referred,  and  througli  which  the 
visionaries  of  the  later  aged's  return  to  the  dreams  which  had 
occupied  the  visionaries  of  an  earlier  time,  must  be  suffi- 
ciently apparent  in  this  passage.  For  not  only  does  Burnet 
speak  after  the  same  manner  of  hills  and  mountains,  but 
also  of  an  idle,  ill-founded  prejudice  entertauied  iu  their 
favor.  We  find  him  thus  summing  up  a  general  survey. of 
the  mountains  of  the  globe :  —  "  Look  upon  these  gi"eat 
ranges  :  in  what  confusion  do  they  lie!  They  have  neither 
form  nor  beauty,  nor  shape,  nor  older,  no  more  than  the 
clouds  in  the  air.  Then,  how  barren,  how  desolate,  how 
naked  are  they !  How  they  stand  neglected  by  nat  urc ! 
Neither  the  rains  can  soften  them,  nor  the  dews  from 
heaven  make  them  fruitful.  I  give  this  short  survey  of  llin 
mountains  of  the  earth  to  help  to  remove  that  prejudice  '>oc 
are  apt  to  have,  or  that  conceit  that  the  ])resent  earth  is 
regularly  formed.     .     .     There  is  nothing  in  nature,"  adds 

*  One  of  the  more  brilliant  Avritcrs  of  the  present  clay, — a  native  of  the 
picturesque  village  in  wliieli  this  anti-geologist  resides, — describes  in  a 
recent  work,  with  the  enthusiasm  of  the  poet,  the  noble  mountains  which 
rise  around  it.  I  know  not,  however,  whctlier  my  admiration  of  the  pas- 
sage was  not  in  some  degree  dashed  by  a  few  comic  notions  suggestive  of 
an  "  imaginary  conversation,"  in  the  style  of  Landor,  between  this  popular 
author  and  his  anti-geologic  townsman,  on  the  merits  of  hills  in  general, 
and  in  especial  on  the  claims  of  those  which  encircle  Comric  "as  the 
mountains  are  round  about  Jerusalem."  The  two  gentlemen  would.  I  sus. 
pect,  experience  considerable  difficulty  in  laying  down,  in  such  a  discus- 
sion, their  common  principles. 


412  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

this  writer,  "  more  shapeless  and  ill-figured  than  an  old  rock 
or  a  mountain." 

I  leave  it  to  my  audience  to  determine  how  flir  this 
depreciatory  view,  —  whether  regarded  as  that  of  Dr. 
Burnet  or  of  the  modern  anti-geologist,  —  agrees  wdth  the 
estimate  of  the  higher  minds,  or  whether  it  manifests  the 
proper  respect  for  the  adorable  Being  who,  in  his  infinite 
wisdom,  made  our  world  what  it  is.  Let  me  next  show 
that  some  of  even  the  abler  and  more  respectable  anti- 
geologists  exhibit  no  very  profound  veneration  for  the  letter 
of  Scripture,  when,  instead  of  bearing,  as  they  think, 
against  the  deductions  of  their  oi)ponents,  they  find  it 
directly  opposed  to  fancies  of  their  own.  It  is  held  by  not 
a  few  among  them,  that  at  the  Deluge  the  sea  and  land 
changed  places.  When  the  waters  receded,  it  was  found, 
they  allege,  that  the  old  land  had  become  ocean,  and  the 
old  ocean  had  become  land  ;  and  as  there  are  certain  rivers 
which  are  described  in  Scripture  as  flowing  beside  Eden, 
and  which,  judging  by  the  names  given  them,  still  exist,  it 
has  become  imperative  on  the  assertors  of  the  hypothesis  to 
show  that  the  rivers  which  now  drain  tracts  of  what  they 
hold  was  tlien  sea,  and  that  fall  into  seas  which  they  hold 
were  then  land,  could  not  by  any  possibility  have  formed 
the  boundaries  of  the  old  Adainic  garden.  Let  us  mark 
how  Mr.  Granville  Penn,  —  certainly  one  of  the  most  ex- 
tensively informed  of  his  class,  —  deals  with  this  difiiculty.* 
There  are,  he  argues,  certain  great  corruptions  of  Scripture. 
What  had  been  at  first  written  as  marginal  notes  by  un- 
inspired men,  and  were  in  some  cases  very  erroneous  and 
absurd,  came  in  the  course  of  transcription  to  be  transferred, 
wholly  by  mistake,  from  the  side  of  the  page  into  the  body 
of  the  text ;  and  thus,  in  at  least  a  few  places,  the  Scrip 

*  "  Comparative  Estimate  of  the  Mineral  and  Mosaical  Geologies."  By 
Granville  Penn,  Esq.    London,  1825. 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  413 

turos  -svcrc  vitiated,  and  now  declare,  instead  of  Divine 
truth,  Avliat  is  neither  sense  nor  fact.  And  on  this  very 
general,  and  certainly  most  perilous  ground,  he  goes  on 
to  argue,  iuisui)ported  by  a  single  ancient  manuscript, 
and  solely  on  -what  he  terms  internal  evidence,  that  the 
vei'ses  in  Genesis  which  conflict  with  his  hypothesis  must  be 
regarded  as  mere  idle  glosses,^ignorantly  or  surreptitiously 
introduced  into  the  text  by  the  ancient  copyists.  "In  the 
second  chapter  of  Genesis,"  we  lind  him  saying,  "  there 
appears  an  internal  critical  evidence  of  an  insertion  of  the 
11th,  12th,  13th,  and  14th  verses,  similar  to  that  of  the  4th 
verse  of  the  5th  chapter  of  St.  John,  and  constituting,  in  a 
similar  manner,  :i  parenthesis  intersecting  the  thread  of  the 
narrative,  and  introduced  solely  for  a  similar  purpose  of 
illustration.  It  does  not  wear  the  character  of  the  simple 
narrative  in  which  it  appears,  but  of  the  surcharge  of  the 
gloss  or  note  of  a  later  age.,  founded  upon  the  fanciftd 
traditions  then  prevailing  with  resjMct  to  the  situation  of 
the  ancient  Paradise.^''  This  certainly  is  cutting  the  knot ; 
and,  if  erected  into  a  precedent  by  the  geologist,  would  no 
doubt  greatly  facilitate  the  labor  of  reconciliation.  It 
■would,  however,  be  perilous  work  for  him.  "A wolf,"  says 
Plutarch,  "  peeping  into  a  hut  where  a  company  of  shep- 
herds Avere  assembled,  saw^  them  regaling  themselves  with 
a  joint  of  mutton.  '  Ye  gods  ! '  he  exclaimed,  '  what  a 
clamor  these  men  would  have  raised  if  they  had  caught 
me  at  such  a  banquet.'  "  I  need  scarcely  add,  that  the 
hypothesis  in  whose  behalf  Scriptui-e  is  thus  divested  of  its 
authority,  and  recklessly  cast  aside,  is  entirely  a  worthless 
one  ;  and  that  the  various  continents  of  the  globe,  instead 
of  all  dating  from  one  pei-iod  little  more  than  four  thousand 
years  back,  are  of  very  various  ages,  —  some  of  them  com- 
paratively modern,  though  absolutely  old  in  relation  to 
human  history ;  and  some  of  so  hoar  an  antiquity,  that  the 
35* 


414  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

terra  since  man  appeared  upon  earth  might  be  employed 
as  a  mere  unit  to  measure  it  by. 

It  need  not  surprise  us  that  a  writer  wlio  takes  such 
strange  liberties  Avith  a  book  which  he  professes  to  respect, 
and  which  he  must  have  had  many  opportunities  of  know- 
ing, should  take  still  greater  liberties  with  ^  science  for 
which  he  entertains  no  respect  whatever,  and  of  whose  first 
principles  he  is  palpably  ignorant.  And  }'et  the  wild  reck- 
lessness of  some  of  his  explanations  of  geological  phe- 
nomena must  somewhat  astonish  all  sufficiently  acquainted 
with  the  science  to  know  that  the  place  and  relations  of  its 
various  foi'mations  have  been  long  since  determined,  and 
now  as  certainly  form  the  regulating  data  of  the  practical 
miner,  as  th.e  places  and  relations  long  since  determined  by 
the  geographer  form  the  regulating  data  of  the  practical 
navigator  or  engineer.  It  is  as  certain,  for  instance,  that 
the  Oolitic  system  underlies  the  Green  Sand  and  the  Chalk, 
Avith  all  the  various  formations  of  the  Tertiary  division,  — 
Eocence,  Miocene,  Pliocene,  and  Pleistocene,  —  as  that 
York  is  situated  to  the  south  of  Edinburgh,  or  that  both 
these  cities  lie  very  considerably  to  the  north  of  London 
and  Paris.  And  the  anti-geologist  who  Avould  argue,  in  tho 
heat  of  controversy,  that  the  Oolite  and  the  Pleistocene 
Avere  contemporaneous-  deposits,  Avould  be  no  more  Avorthy 
of  reply  than  the  anti-geographer  who  Avould  assert,  in 
order  to  serA^e  some  argumentative  purpose,  that  the  North 
Cape  lies  in  the  same  latitudinal  parallel  as  South  California, 
or  that  Terra  del  Fuego  is  but  a  day's  sailing  from  Iceland. 
And  yet  such,  as  I  intimated  on  a  former  evening,  is  the 
line  taken  up  by  Mr.  Granville  Penn,  in  dealing  Avith  the 
difiiculties  of  the  Ivirkdale  Cave,  so  remarkable  for  its 
accumulations  of  gnawed  bones  of  the  Pleistocene  ages,  — 
especially  for  its  bones  of  hyaenas,  tigers,  bears,  Avolves, 
rhinoceroses,  and  elephants.     The  cave  occurs  in  the  moor- 


THE   ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  415 

lands  of  Yorksliire,  in  a  limestone  rock  of  that  Oolitic 
division  to  mIucIi  tlie  Oxford  Clay  and  the  Coral  Rag 
belong,  and  contains  corals  and  shells  that  had  passed  into 
extinction  long  even  ere  the  Tertiary  period  began  ;  -while 
in  the  cave  itself,  mixed  with  bones  of  the  extinct  mammals 
of  the  geologic  ngo  in  immediate  advance  of  the  present 
one,  there  have  I  een  found  the  contemporary  remains  of 
animals  that  still  live  in  our  fields  and  woods,  such  as  the 
hare,  the  rabbit,  the  weasel,  and  the  Avater  rat.  And  M'e 
find  Mr.  Penn  assigning  both  the  Oolitic  rock  in  which  the 
cave  is  hollowed,  and  the  mammalian  remains  of  the  cave 
itself,  equally  to  the  period  of  the  deluge.  The  limestone 
existed  at  that  time,  it  would  seem,  as  a  soft  calcareous 
paste,  into  which  the  animal  remains,  floated  northwards 
from  intertropical  regions  on  the  waters  of  the  Flood,  were 
precipitated  in  vast  quantities,  and  sank,  and  then,  ferment- 
ing under  the  putrefactive  influences,  the  gas  which  they 
formed  blew  up  the  yielding  lime  and  mud  around  them, 
into  a  long  narrow  cave,  just  as  a  glass-blower  blows  up  a 
bottle,  or  as  a  little  yeast  blows  up  into  similar  but  greatly 
smaller  cavities  a  bit  of  leaven.  And  the  stalactites  and 
stalagmites  which  encrust  the  Kirkdale  Cave  are,  Mv.  Penn 
holds,  simply  the  last  runnings  of  the  lime  that  exuded  after 
the  general  mass  had  begun  to  set.  Certainly  any  one  dis- 
posed to  take  such  liberties  with  the  Bible  on  the  one  hand, 
and  with  geologic  science  on  the  other,  as  those  taken  in 
the  given  instances  by  this  most  formidable  of  the  anti- 
geologists,  could  have  but  little  difiiculty  in  making  either 
Scripture  as  geological  or  geology  as  Scriptural  as  he  had  a 
mind.  His  chief  danger  Avould  be  that  of  making  the 
sounder  theologians  just  a  little  angry,  and  of  escaping, 
unless  quoted  for  the  joke's  sake,  the  notice  of  the  geolo- 
gists altogether.  In  truth,  the  extreme  absurdity  of 
our   later  anti-geologists   in  virtually   contending,   in   the 


416  THE    GEOLOGY  OF 

controversy,  that  their  ignorance  of  an  interesting  science, 
founded  on  millions  of  determined  facts,  ought  to  be  per- 
mitted to  weigh  against  the  knoAvledge  of  the  men  who 
have  studied  it  most  thoroughly,  forms  their  best  defence. 
It  secures  them  against  all  save  neglect.  As,  however, 
some  of  their  number  are  well  meaning  men,  who  would 
not  be  ridiculous  if  they  could  help  it,  and  only  oppose 
themselves  to  the  geologists  because  they  deem  them  mis- 
chievous and  in  error,  it  may  be  Avoith  while  showing  them, 
by  an  example  or  two,  the  ludicrous  nature  of  the  positions 
which  in  their  honest  ignorance  they  permit  themselves  to 
occupy,  and  the  real  scope  and  bearing  of  the  arguments 
which  they  umvittingly  jDermit  themselves  to  use.  I  shall 
adduce  two  several  instances  of  reasoning,  directed  by  the 
anti-geologists  against  their  antagonists  (as  they  themselves 
believed),  but  which,  from  their  ignorance  of  the  true  state 
of  the  argument,  and  of  the  bearing  of  the  flicts  with  which 
they  dealt,  in  reality  made  out  for  these  antagonists  as 
strong  a  case  as  they  could  possibly  have  made  out  for 
themselves.  And  I  am  sure  that,  rather  than  be  found 
siding  with  their  opponents,  the  anti-geologists  would  be 
content  even  to  acquire  a  little  geology. 

I  shall  select  my  first  instance  from  the  records  of  the 
annual  controversy  which  used  to  rage  some  ten  or  fifteen 
years  ago,  in  sermons,  newspapers,  and  magazines,  imme- 
diately after  every  meeting  of  the  British  Association.  A 
religious  Dublm  newspaper, — the  "Statesman  and  Record," 
—  since  extinct,  took  always  an  active  part  in  these  discus- 
sions on  the  anti-geological  side,  and  boldly  affirmed,  as  in 
a  number  now  before  me,  that  geology  had  the  devil  for  its 
author.  A  learned  correspondent  of  the  paper,  \\ho  was, 
however,  somewhat  more  charitable,  thought  that  at  least 
the  faets  of  the  science  might  be  exempted  from  a  con- 
demnation so  sweeping;  nay,  that,  well  interpreted,  they 


THE   ANTI-GEOLOGISTS  417 

might  be  found  decidedly  opposed  to  at  least  the  more 
mischievous  deductions  of  the  geologists ;  and  in  illusti-at- 
ing  the  point,  Ave  find  him  thus  arguing,  from  certain 
appearances  in  the  valley  of  the  Nile,  that  the  globe  Avhich 
we  inhabit  cannot  possibly  be  more  than  six  thousand 
years  old.*  "The  valley  of  the  Nile,"  says  this  writer,  " is 
known  to  be  covered  with  a  bed  of  slime  which  the  river 
has  deposited  in  its  periodical  inundations,  and  which  rests 
on  a  foundation  of  sand,  like  that  of  the  adjacent  desert. 
The  French  savans  who  accompanied  Bonaparte  in  his 
Egyptian  expedition  made  several  experiments  to  ascertain 
the  thickness  and  depth  of  this  superincumbent  bed.  They 
dug  about  two  hundred  pits,  and  carefully  measured  the 
thickness  in  the  transversal  section  of  the  valley,  where  the 
deposit  liad  been  free  from  obstacles,  and  had  not  been 
materially  increased  or  lessened  by  local  causes.  They 
found  the  mean  of  all  these  measurements  to  be  six  and  a 
half  metres,  or  rather  more  than  twenty  feet.  M.  Gironde 
endeavored  to  determine  the  quantity  of  slime  deposited  in 
a  century ;  and  he  found  that  the  elevation  of  soil  in  that 
period  was  rather  less  than  four  inches  and  a  half!  Dividing 
the  total  thickness  of  the  bed  by  the  centenary  elevation, 
he  found  the  quotient  56.50 ;  whence  it  followed  that  the 
inundations  had  commenced  5650  years  before  the  year 
1800,  when  the  experiments  were  made,  —  a  number  which 
only  differed  159  years  from  the  Mosaic  date.  The  differ- 
ence is  not  very  important,  when  it  is  considered  that  tlie 
most  trifling  error,  whether  in  the  measure  of  the  entire 
superincumbent  bed,  or  in  the  valuation  of  the  quantity 
of  slime  deposited  in  a  century,  affects  the  final  results. 
Notwithstanding  this,  the  coincidence  between  the  sacred 
historian  and  the  computations  of  science  is  remarkable, 

*  "  Statesman  and  Record,"  October  Gth,  1S46. 


418  THEGEOLOGYOF 

and  furnishes  one  proof  more  of  the  harmony  existing 
between  nature  and  revelation.  An  honest  experimentahst 
was  consti'ained  to  arrive  at  this  conehision  at  a  period 
when  the  infidel  school  of  our  continental  neighbors  was  in 
high  feather.  I  am  sorry  to  add,  that  the  result  of  his  own 
calculation  had  not  that  effect  on  the  philosopher  himself, 
or  his  free-thinking  associates,  which,  for  their  own  sakes, 
was  desirable  ;  but  it  is  no  less  valuable  to  us  on  that 
account ;  for  we  know  that  an  unwilling  witness  to  the 
truth  is  worth  a  score  of  evidences  already  prejudiced  in 
its  favor." 

^  Now,  this  is  clear,  distinct  statement ;  and  nothing  can 
be  more  evident  than  that  the  theologian  who  makes  it 
holds  he  is  reasoning  with  conclusive  effect  in  behalf  of 
Avhat  may  be  termed  the  short  chronology,  —  not  in  its 
legitimate  connection  with  the  recent  introduction  of  the 
human  species,  but  in  its  supposed  bearing  on  the  age  of 
the  earth.     And  in  doing  so  he  commits  himself  to  the 

/  apparent  positive  fact,  determined  on  what  may  be  regarded 
as  geologic  data,  that  the  river  Nile  has  been  flowing  over 
its  bed  for  about  as  many  years  as  have  elapsed,  according 
to  the  Hebrew  chronology  adopted  by  Usher,  since  the 
creation  of  man,  and  no  more.  To  the  integrity  of  this 
inference  he  pledges  himself,  as  an  inference  to  which  the 
inlidel  ought  to  have  yielded,  as  conclusive  in  its  bearing 
on  the  question  of  the  earth's  age,  and  as  of  singular  value 
to  the  believer  who  sets  himself  to  deal  with  the  evidences 
of  his  faith.  Now,  without  referring  to  the  circumstance 
f  tha^rthe  data  on  which  the  French  savans  under  Napoleon 

//founded  have  since  been  challenged  by  geologists,  such 
as  Lieutenant  Newbold  and  Sir  G.  Wilkinson,  who  have 
carefully  suiweyed  the  rocks  and  soils  of  Egypt  with  the 
assistance  of  clearer  light  than  existed  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  century,  let  us,  for  the  argument's  sake,  hold 


THE    ANXr-GEOLOGISTS.  419 

the  inference  to  be  quite  as  good  as  this  theologian  regards 
it.  And  see,  we  urge  upon  liini,  that  you  yourself  do  not 
suffer  it  to  drop  should  you  iliid  tliat  it  commits  you  to  the 
other  side  of  the  argument.  Be  at  least  as  fliir  and  honest 
as  you  say  the  infidels  ought  to  have  been.  The  six  and  a 
half  metres  of  silt  and  slime,  —  representative,  let  us  hold, 
of  from  five  to  six  thousand  years,  —  rest,  you  say,  on  "  a 
foundation  of  sand  like  that  of  the  adjacent  desert."  But 
have  you  ascertained  on  what  the  sand  rests?  I  know 
nothing  of  that,  replies  the  theologian  ;  I  had  not  even 
thought  of  that.  But  the  geologist  has  thought  of  it,  we 
reply;  and  has  spent  much  time  under  the  hot  sun  in 
ascertaining  the  point.  For  nearly  three  hundred  miles, — 
from  the  inner  boundaries  of  the  delta  to  within  a  few- 
hours'  journey  of  the  cataracts,  —  the  silt  and  sand  rest  on 
what  is  known  as  the  "marine"  or  nummulitic  limestone, 
—  a  formation  of  great  extent,  for  it  runs  into  the  Nubian 
desert  on  the  one  hand,  and  into  the  Libyan  desert  on  the 
other;  and  \\hich,  though  it  abounds  in  the  animalcules  of 
the  European  chalk,  is  held  to  belong,  in  at  least  its  upper 
beds,  which  are  charged  with  nummulites,  to  the  earlier 
Eocene.  Over  this  marine  limestone  there  rests  a  newer 
formation,  of  later  Tertiary  age,  which  contains  the  casts 
of  sea  shells,  and  whole  forests  of  dicotyledonous  trees, 
converted  into  a  fiiut-like  chert ;  and  over  all  repose  the 
sands  and  gravels  of  the  desert.  Underneath  the  silt  of 
the  river,  then,  and  the  sand  of  the  desert,  lie  these  two 
formations  of  the  Tertiary  division.  The  lower,  which  is 
of  great  thickness,  must  have  been  of  slow  formation.  It 
is  composed  almost  exclusively,  in  many  parts,  of  micro- 
scopic animals,  and  abounds  in  others  in  fossil  shells, — 
nautili,  ostreada3,  turritella,  and  nunnnulites,  with  corals, 
sponges,  the  remains  of  Crustacea,  and  the  teeth  of  fishes. 
And  between  the  period  of  its  deposition  and  that  of  the 


420  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

fomiation  wliich  rests  upon  it  the  surface  of  what  is  now 
Egypt  must  have  been  elevated  over  the  surface  of  the  sea, 
to  be  covered,  in  the  course  of  ages,  by  great  forests, 
which,  ere  the  land  assumed  its  present  form  and  level, 
were  submerged  by  another  oscillation  of  the  surface,  and 
petrified  amid  beds  of  a  siliceous  sand  at  the  bottom  of 
the  ocean.  Nor  is  the  underlying  marine  limestone  by  any 
means  the  oldest  of  the  sedimentary  rocks  of  Egyj^t.  It 
rests  on  a  sandstone  of  Permian  or  Triassic  age ;  the  sand- 
stone rests,  in  turn,  on  the  famous  Breccia  de  Verde  of 
Egypt ;  and  the  Breccia  on  a  group  of  Azoic  rocks,  gneisses, 
quartzes,  mica  schists,  and  clay  slates,  that  wrap  round  the 
granitic  nucleus  of  Syene.  The  formations  of  Egypt  con- 
stitute a  well-determined  part  of  that  great  series  of  systems 
which  compose  the  upper  portion  of  the  earth's  crust :  its 
silt  is  by  far  the  most  inconsiderable  of  its '  deposits ;  and 
if  five  thousand  six  hundred  and  fifty  years  were  exhausted 
in  laying  down  layer  after  layer  of  the  twenty  feet  which 
I  form  its  average  thickness,  what  enormous  periods  must 
we  not  demand  in  addition  for  the  laying  down  of  the 
forest  formation,  of  the  marine  limestone  formation,  of  the 
New  Red  Sandstone  formation,  of  the  Breccia  de  Verde 
formation,  and,  in  short,  for  the  some  ten  miles  of  fossilifer- 
ous  rock  of  Avhich  these  deposits  form  such  definite,  well- 
determined  portions;  besides  the  time  necessary  for  the 
production  of  the  enormously  developed  Azoic  rocks  which 
lie  under  all !  The  theologian,  in  this  instance,  instead  of 
reasoning,  as  he  himself  supposed,  in  behalf  of  the  short 
chronology,  has  been  making  out  a  very  formidable  case 
for  the  long  one;  and  all  that  the  geologist  can  have 
to  urge  upon  him  in  the  circumstances  is  simply  that  he 
should  act  as  he  holds  the  infidel  ought  to  have  done, 
and  yield  to  the  force  of  evidence.  I  may  mention  in 
the  passing,  that  some  of  the  most  ancient  buildings  of 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS. 


421 


Egypt  are  formed  of  the  Tertiary  marine  limestones  of  the 
country;  the  stones  of  the  pyramids  are  charged  with 
nummuiites,  known  to  the  Arabs  as  "Pharaoh's  beans;" 

Fig.  116. 


NUMMULITES    LAEVIGATA. 

(Pharaoh's  Beans.) 


and  these  organisms  stand  out  in  high  relief  on  the 
weathered  portions  of  the  Great  Sphinx,  Some  of  the 
oldest  tlungs  in  the  world  in  their  relation  to  human  his- 
tory, —  erections,  many  of  which  had  survived  the  memory 
of  their  founders  even  in  the  days  of  Herodotus,  —  are 
formed  of  materials  so  modern  in  their  relation  to  the 
geologic  epochs,  that  they  had  no  existence  as  rock  un/il 
after  the  Palaeozoic  and  Secondary  ages  had  gone  by.  Not 
only  the  Carboniferous  sandstone  of  the  Hiffh  Church  and 
Parliament  House  of  Edinburgh,  but  even  the  Oolitic  (that 
is,  Portland  stone)  of  Somerset  House  and  St.  Paul's,  are 
of  an  antiquity  incalculably  vast  compared  with  the  stone 
out  of  which  the  oldest  of  the  pyramids  were  fashioned. 

The  second  example  which  I  shall  adduce  is  one  with 
which  many  of  my  auditors  must  be  already  familiar.  The 
Falls  of  Niagara  are  gradually  eating  their  way  through  an 
elevated  tract  of  table-land,  upwards  towards  Lake  Erie,  at 
the  rate  of  about  fifty  yards  in  forty  yenrs  ;  and  it  has  been 
argued  by  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  that  as  they  are  now  seven 
miles  distant  from  Queenston,  where  the  elevation  of  the 
S6 


422  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

plateaux  begins,  they  must  have  taken  about  ten  thousand 
years  to  scoop  out  their  present  deep  channel  through  that 
space.*  Ten  thousand  years  ago  the  Falls  were,  he  infers, 
at  Queenston ;  and  the  grounds  on  which  he  reasons  are 
exactly  those  on  which  one  Avould  infer  that  a  laborer  Avho 
had  cut  a  ditch  two  hundred  yards  long  at  the  rate  of  ten 
yards  per  day,  and  was  still  at  work  without  pause  or  inter- 
mission, had  begun  to  cut  it  just  twenty  days  previous.  A 
reverend  anti-geologist  takes  up  Sir  Charles ;  f  and,  after 
denouncing  the  calculation  as  "a  stab  at  the  Christian 
religion,"  seeing  it  involves  the  assertion  that  the  "  Falls 
were  actually  at  Queenston  four  thousand  years  before  the 
creation  of  the  world  according  to  Moses,"  he  brings  certain 
facts,  adduced  both  by  other  writers  and  Sir  Charles  hini- 

*  Sir  Charles  Lyell's  statement  is  by  no  means  so  express  or  definite  as 
it  is  represented  to  be  in  this  passage,  in  wliich  I  have  taken  the  evidence 
of  liis  opponents  repcarding  it.  What  he  really  says  (see  his  "Principles," 
second  edition,  18'i2)  is  what  follows:  —  "If  tho  ratio  of  recession  had 
never  exceeded  tifty  yards  in  forty  years,  it  must  have  required  nearly  ten 
thousand  years  for  the  excavation  of  the  whole  ravine  ;  but  no  probable 
conjecture  can  be  offered  as  to  the  quantitj'  of  time  consumed  in  such  an 
operation,  because  the  retrograde  movement  may  have  been  much  more 
rapid  when  the  whole  current  was  confined  within  a  space  not  exceeding 
a  fourth  or  fifth  of  that  which  the  Falls  now  occupy."  In  the  eighth 
edition  of  the  same  work,  however,  published  in  1830,  after  he  had  ex- 
amined the  Falls,  there  occurs  the  following  rc-statcmcnt  of  the  case :  — 
"  After  the  most  careful  inquiries  I  was  able  to  make  during  my  visit  to 
the  spot  in  1841-42,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  average  [recession] 
of  one  foot  a  year  would  be  a  much  more  probable  conjecture  than  that 
of  one  and  a  quarter  yards.  In  that  case  it  would  have  required  thirtp- 
five  thousand  years  for  the  retreat  of  the  Falls  from  the  escarpment  of 
Queenston  to  their  present  site.  It  seems  by  no  means  improbable  that 
such  a  result  would  be  no  exaggeration  of  the  trutli,  although  we  cannot 
assume  that  the  retrograde  movement  has  been  uniform.  At  some  points 
it  may  have  receded  much  faster  than  at  present ;  but  in  general  its  prog- 
ress was  probably  slower,  because  the  cataract,  when  it  began  to  recede, 
must  have  been  nearly  twice  its  present  height." 

t  "  Scottish  Christian  Herald,"  1838,  vol.  iii.,  p.  766. 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  423 

self,  to  bear  on  the  calculation,  such  as  the  fact  that  the 
deep  trench  through  which  the  Niagara  runs  is  much  nar- 
rower in  its  lower  than  in  its  upper  i-eaches,  and  that  the 
river  must  have  performed  its  work  of  excavation,  when  the 
breadth  was  less,  at  a  greatly  quicker  rate  than  now.  And 
thus  the  work  of  excavating  the  trench  is  brought  fairly 
within  six  thousand  years.  Nor  is  the  principle  of  the 
reasoning  bad.  In  our  illustration  of  the  ditch  excavated 
by  the  laborer  we  of  course  take  it  for  granted  that  it  is  a 
ditch  of  the  same  depth  and  breadth  throughout,  and  ex- 
cavated in  the  same  sort  of  soil ;  for  if  greatly  narrower  and 
shallower  at  one  place  than  at  another,  or  dug  in  a  greatly 
softer  mould,  the  rate  of  its  excavation  at  different  times 
might  be  very  different  indeed,  and  the  general  calculation 
Avidely  erroneous,  if  based  on  the  ratio  of  j^rogress  when  it 
Avent  on  most  slowly,  taken  as  an  average  ratio  for  the 
whole.  But  the  anti-geologist  provokes  only  a  smile  when, 
in  his  triumph,  he  exultingly  exclaims,  "  It  is  on  grounds 
such  as  these  that  the  most  learned  and  voluminous  among 
English  geologists  disputes  the  Mosaic  history  of  the  Cre- 
ation and  Deluge,  —  a  strong  proof  that  even  men  of  argu- 
ment on  other  subjects  often  reason  in  the  most  childish  and 
ridiculous  manner,  and  on  grounds  totally  false,  when  they 
undertake  to  deny  the  truth  of  the  Holy  Scriptures." 
Now,  it  must  be  wholly  unnecessary  to  remark  here,  that  it 
is  surely  one  thing  to  "  undertake  to  deny  the  truth  of  the 
Holy  Scriptures,"  and  quite  another  and  different  thing  to 
hold  that  the  Niagara  Falls  may  have  been  at  Queenston 
ten  thousand  years  ago  ;  or  further,  that  it  seems  not  in  the 
least  Avise  to  stake  the  truth  of  Revelation  on  any  such 
issue.  Let  me  request  you,  however,  to  observe,  that  in 
one  important  respect  this  writer  resembles  the  former  one. 
The  former,  ignorant  of  the  various  phenomena  exhibited 
by   the   great    deposits   of  Egypt,  exhausted   all    his  five 


424  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

thousand  six  hundred  years  of  available  time  in  accounting 
for  the  formation  of  one  of  the  least  of  them,  —  the  silt  of 
the  Nile ;  and  the  latter,  though  he  bids  down  Sir  Charles 
some  four  thousand  four  hundred  years  or  so  in  the  one 
item  of  scooping  out  the  bed  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  at  least 
expends  the  remainder  of  the  ten  thousand,  —  his  five 
thousand  six  hundred  years,  —  in  that  work  of  excavation 
alone,  and  leaves  himself  no  further  sums  to  set  off  asrainst 
the  vai'ious  geologic  processes  that  may  have  preceded  it. 

In  this  case,  as  in  the  other,  let  us  grant,  for  the  argu- 
ment's sake,  all  the  facts.  Let  us  admit  that  the  trench 
through  which  the  St.  Lawrence  now  flows  has  been  cut  by 
the  river  in  somewhat  less  than  six  thousand  years.  But 
through  what,  let  us  ask,  has  it  been  cut  ?  There  can  exist 
no  doubt  on  the  subject :  it  has  been  cut  through  an  ancient 
gravejMrd  of  the  Upper  Silurian  system,  charged  with  the 
peculiar  fossils  characteristic  of  what  are  known  as  the 
Clinton  and  Niagara  groups,  and  common,  many  of  them, 
to  the  LTpper  Silurian  of  our  own  country  and  of  the 
European  continent.  Leptmna  depressa  and  Pentamerus 
ohlongus,  two  of  the  most  frequent  shells  of  the  deposit, 
occur  also  in  equal  abundance  in  the  Dudley  and  Caradoc 
formations  of  England ;  its  prevaiUng  encrinite,  Ichthyo- 
crimes  kevis,  is  scarce  distinguishable  from  an  encrinite 
which  I  have  often  picked  up  in  the  quarries  of  the 
"Wren's  Nest"  {Ichthyocrinxis  lyyriforniis) ;  while  its 
prevailing  trilobite,  Phacops  limiilurus^  seems  to  be  but  a 
transatlantic  variety  of  our  well  known  Asaphus  (Phacops) 
caudatus.  Further,  the  sequence  of  the  various  formations 
both  above  and  below  the  Niagara  group,  is  shown  Avith 
remarkable  distinctness  in  that  part  of  the  world  along  the 
shores  of  the  great  lakes.  They  may  be  traced  downward, 
on  the  one  hand,  along  the  Lower  Silurian  deposits,  to  the 
non-fossiliferous   base    on    which    the    system    rests,   and 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS  425 

upwards,  on  the  other,  through  the  Old  Red  Sandstone 
and  the  Carboniferous  Limestone,  to  the  workable  Coal 
Measures.  Both  stratigraphically  and  palgeontologically 
the  place  in  the  scale  of  the  Niagara  graveyard  can  be 
definitely  determined;  and  a  superficial  deposit  on  the 
heights  in  its  imnieduite  neighborhood  shows  that  the  river 
did  not  begin  its  work  of  excavation  among  its  long  extinct 
shells,  trilobites,  and  corals,  until  after  not  only  the  great 
Palaeozoic,  but  also  the  Secondary  and  Tertiary  divisions 
had  been  laid  down,  and  the  recent  period  ushered  in.  The 
superficial  shells  of  the  adjacent  heights  belong  to  the 
Pleistocene  age,  and  show  that  in  even  that  comparatively 
modern  time  the  lower  lands  of  Upper  Canada  were  sub- 
merged beneath  the  level  of  the  ocean,  and  that  a  series  of 
deep  seas,  connected  by  broad  sounds,  occupied  the  place 
of  the  great  lakes.  Not  until  the  last  u])hcaval  of  the  land 
was  the  river  now  known  as  the  St.  Lawrence  called  into 
existence,  to  beszin  its  work  of  excavation ;  and  ere  that 
event  took  place,  fully  ten  miles  of  fossiliferous  rock  had 
been  deposited  on  the  earth's  surfiice,  charged  with  the 
remains  of  many  succeeduig  creations.  The  deposit  through 
which  the  St.  Lawrence  is  slowly  mining  its  way  is  older 
than  the  river  itself  by  the  vast  breadth  of  the  four  Teitiary 
periods,  by  that  of  all  the  Secondary  ageii,  —  Cretaceous, 
Oolitic,  and  Triassic,  —  by  the  periods,  too,  of  the  Permian 
system,  of  the  Carboniferous  system,  of  the  Old  Red  sys- 
tem, and  of  the  uppermost  beds  of  the  Upper  Silurian 
system.  But  a  simple  illustration  may  better  serve  to  show 
the  true  character  of  the  conclusion  urged  here  by  the 
opponent  of  Sir  Charles,  than  any  such  line  of  statement  as 
that  which  I  employ,  however  clear  to  the  geologist.  In 
the  year  1817,  Prince's  Street,  in  Edinburgh,  was  opened 
up  to  the  Calton  Hill,  and  the  Calton  burying-ground  cut 
through  to  the  depth  of  many  feet  by  the  roadway.  Let  us 
36 


426  THE    GEOLOGY    OF 

suppose  that  Avhen  the  excavation  has  been  carried  a 
hundred  yards  into  the  cemetery,  a  geologist,  finding  the 
laborers  cutting  on  the  average  about  a  yard  per  day, 
simply  intimates  as  his  opinion  that  the  laborers  have  been 
a  hundred  days  at  "work.  *'  No,"  replies  a  controversialist 
on  the  anti-geological  side;  "for  the  first  fifty  yards,  so 
soft  was  the  subsoil,  and  so  shalloAV  the  covering  of  mould, 
that  the  laborers  must  have  cut  at  the  rate  of  tico  yards  a 
day ;  it  has  been  merely  for  the  last  fifty  yards  that  they 
have  been  excavating  at  the  present  slow  rate:  they  cannot 
have  been  more  than  seventy-five  days  at  work.  I  marvel 
Exceedingly  at  the  absurdity  of  geological  reasoners :  pal- 
pahly  the  burying-fjround  of  the  Gallon  is  otdy  seventy-jive 
days  oldP  Now,  such,  in  no  exaggerated,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, greatly  modified  foiTn,  is  the  argument  that  would 
limit  Xh^  age  of  the  earth  to  the  period  during  which  the 
St.  Lawrence  has  been  scooping  out  a  channel  for  itself, 
fi-ora  Q.ueenston  to  Niagara,  through  an  ancient  Silurian 
burying-ground.  Both  arguments  alike  confoimd  the  age 
of  the  ancient  bur}'ing-grounds  with  the  date  of  the  modern 
excavations  opened  up  through  them  ;  but  in  order  to 
render  the  argument  of  my  illustration  equally  absurd  with 
the  other,  it  Avould  be  not  only  necessary  to  infer  that  the 
Calton  cemetery  was  only  seventy-five  days  old,  but  also  that 
the  rock  on  which  it  rested  was  no  older. 

But  enough  of  follies  such  as  these !  I  had  marked  a 
good  many  other  passages  of  similai"  character  in  the  writ- 
injTS  of  the  recent  anti-geologists,  and  would  have  little 
difficulty  in  filling  a  volume  with  such ;  but  it  Avould  be  a 
useless,  though  mayhap  curious  work,  and  is  much  better 
exhibited  by  specimen  than  as  a  whole.  A  little  folly  is 
amusing,  but  much  of  it  fatigues.  There  is  a  time  coming, 
and  now  not  very  distant,  when  the  vagaries  of  the  anti- 
geologists  will  be  as  obsolete  as  those  of  the  geographers  of 


THE    ANTI-GEOLOGISTS.  427 

Salamanca,  or  as  those  of  the  astronomers  who  upheld  the 
orthodoxy  of  Ptolemy  against  Galileo  and  Newton  ;  and 
when  they  will  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  curious  fossils,  very 
monstrous  and  bizarre,  and  altogether  of  an  extinct  type,  but 
which  had  once  not  only  life,  but  were  formidable.     It  will 
then  be  seen  by  ail  what  a  noble  vestibule  the  old  geologic 
ages  form  to  that  human  period  in  which  moral  responsi- 
bility first  began  upon  earth,  and  a  creature  destined  to 
iinmortality   anticipated    an   eternal   hereafter.      There   is 
always  much  of  the  mean  and  the  little  in  the  worlds  which 
man  creates  for  himself,  and  in  the  liistory  which  he  gives 
them.     Of  all  the  abortions  of  the  middle  ages  Avhich  have 
come  down  to  us,  I  know  not  a  more  miserable  one,  —  at 
once  ludicrous  and  sad,  —  than  that  heavens  and  earth  of 
Cosmas  Indicopleustes^  the   moidc,  Avhich  I  illustrated  by 
diagrams  in  my  last  lecture  (Figs.  114,  115),    They  are  just 
such  heavens  and  earth  as  a  monk  might  have  made,  and 
made  too  at  a  sitting.     The  heavens,  represented  as  a  solid 
arch  raised  on  tall  Avails,  resemble,  as  a  Avhole,  the  arch 
which  figures  in  the  middle  of  a  freemason's  apron,  or,  more 
homely  still,  the  section  of  a  Avine  cellar ;  Avhile  the  earth 
lies  beneath  as  a  great  plain  or  floor,  Avith  a  huge  hill  in  the 
distance,  behind  Avhich  the  sun  passes  Avhen  it  is  night. 
And  yet  tliis  scheme  gave  hiAV  to  the  Avorld  for  more  than 
six   centuries,  and  lay  like  a  nightmare   on   physical  dis- 
covery, astronomic  and  geographical.     The  anti-geologists 
have  been  less  mischievous,  for  they  live  in  a  more  enlight- 
ened age ;  and  Ave  already  see  but  the  straggling  remains 
of  the  body,  and  hnoAv  that  the  time  cannot  be  far  distant 
when  it  Avill  be  as  completely  extinct  as  any  of  the  old 
faunas.     The  great   globe,    ever  revolving   on   itself,    and 
journeying  in  space  round  the  sun,  in  obedience  to  laAVS 
which  it  immortalized  a  Newton  to  discover  and  demon- 
strate, is  an  mfinitely  more  sublime  and  noble  object  than 


428        THE   GEOLOGY   OF   ANTI-GEOLOGISTS. 

the  earth  of  Cosmas  the  monk,  with  its  conical  mountain 
and  its  crypt-like  firmament ;  nor  can  I  doubt  that  its  history 
throughout  the  long  geologic  ages,  —  its  strange  story  of 
successive  creations,  each  placed  in  advance  of  that  which 
had  gone  before,  and  its  succeeding  organisms,  vegetable 
and  animal,  ranged  according  to  their  appearance  in  time, 
on  principles  which  our  profounder  students  of  natural 
science  have  but  of  late  determined,  —  will  be  found  in  an 
equal  degree  more  worthy  of  its  Divine  Author  than  that 
wliicli  Avould  huddle  the  whole  into  a  few  literal  days,  and 
convert  the  incalculably  ancient  universe  which  we  inhabit 
into  a  hastily  run-uj)  erection  of  yesterday. 


LECTURE  ELEVENTH. 

ON   THE  LESS  KNOWN  FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND.* 

PART    I. 

Scotland  has  its  four  fossil  floras,  —  its  flora  of  the  Old 
Red  Sandstone,  its  Carboniferous  flora,  its  Oolitic  flora, 
and  that  flora  of  apparently  Teitiary  age  of  which  his 
Grace  the  Duke  of  Argyll  found  so  interesting  a  fragment 
overflown  by  the  thick  basalt  beds  and  trap  tufls  of  Mull. 
Of  these,  the  only  one  adequately  known  to  the  geologist 
is  the  gorgeous  flora  of  the  Coal  Measures,  —  probably  the 
richest,  in  at  least  individual  plants,  which  the  world  has 
yet  seen.  The  others  are  all  but  wholly  unknown ;  and 
the  Association  may  be  the  more  disposed  to  tolerate  the 
comparative  meagreness  of  the  few  brief  remarks  which  I 
purpose  making  on  two  of  their  number,  —  the  floras  of 
the  Old  Red  Sandstone  and  the  Oolite,  —  from  the  consid- 
eration that  that  meagreness  is  only  too  truly  representative 
of  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge  regarding  them ;  and 
that  if  my  descriptions  be  scanty  and  inadequate,  it  is  only 
because  the  facts  are  still  few.     How  much  of  the  lost  may 

*  The  substance  of  this  and  the  following  lecture  was  originally  given 
in  a  single  paper,  before  the  Geological  Section  of  the  British  Association, 
held  at  Glasgow  in  September  1855.  So  considerable  have  been  the  ad- 
ditions, however,  that  the  one  paper  has  swelled  into  two  lectures.  Most 
of  the  added  matter  was  at  first  thrown  into  the  form  of  Notes;  but  it  was 
found,  that  from  their  length  and  frequency,  they  would  have  embarrassed 
the  printer,  mayhap  the  reader  also;  and  so  most  of  the  larger  ones  have 
been  introduced  into  the  text  within  brackets. 


430  ON   THE   LESS    KNOWN 

yet  be  recovered  I  know  not ;  but  the  circumstance  that 
two  great  floras,  —  remote  predecessors  of  the  existing 
one,  —  Avhich  once  covered  with  tlieir  continuous  mantle 
of  o-reen  the  dry  land  of  what  is  now  Scotland,  should  be 
represented  by  but  a  few  coniferous  fossils,  a  few  cycadace- 
ous  fronds,  a  few  ferns  and  club  mosses,  must  serve  to 
show  what  mere  fragments  of  the  past  history  of  our 
country  Ave  have  yet  been  able  to  recover  from  the  rocks, 
and  how  very  much  in  the  work  of  exploration  and  dis- 
coveiy  still  remains  for  us  to  do.  We  stand  on  the  further 
edo-e  of  the  great  floras  of  by-past  creations,  and  have 
irathered  but  a  few  handfuls  of  faded  leaves,  a  few  broken 
branches,  a  few  decayed  cones. 

The  Silurian  deposits  of  our  country  have  not  yet  fur- 
nished us  with  any  unequivocal  traces  of  a  terrestrial 
vegetation.  Professor  Nicol  of  Aberdeen,  on  subjecting 
to  the  microscope  the  ashes  of  a  Silurian  anthracite  which 
occurs  in  Peeblesshire,  detected  in  it  minute  tubular  fibres, 
Avhich  seem,  he  says,  to  indicate  a  higher  class  of  vegetation 
than  the  alga3 ;  but  these  may  have  belonged  to  a  marine 
vegetation  notwithstanding.  I  detected  some  years  ago, 
in  the  Trilobite-bcaiing  schists  of  Girvan,  associated  Avith 
graptolites  of  the  Lower  Silurian  type,  a  vegetable  organism 
somewhat  resembling  the  leaf  of  one  of  the  pond  weeds,  — 
an  order  of  plants,  some  of  Avhose  species,  such  as  Zostera, 
find  their  proper  habitats  in  salt  water,  I  have  placed 
beside  this  specimen  a  fragment  of  the  same  graptolite- 
bearing  rock,  across  which  I  have  pasted  part  of  a  leaf  of 
Zostera  marina^  the  only  plant  of  our  Scottish  seas  which 
is  furnished  with  true  roots,  bears  real  flowers  inclosed  in 
hei-baceous  spathes,  and  produces  a  Avell  formed  farinaceous 
seed.  It  will  be  seen,  tliat  in  the  few  points  of  comparison 
Avhich  can  be  instituted  between  forms  so  exceedingly  sim- 
ple, the  ancient  very  closely  resembles  the  recent  organism. 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


431 


It  is  not  impossible,  therefore,  that  the  Sihirian  vegetable 
may  have  belonged  to  some  tribe  of  plants  allied  to  Zostera, 


rig.  117. 


a,  SILURIAN   OKGANISM.       b,   GRAPTOLITE.       C,  PORTIOX   OF   THB 
LEAF   OF    ZOSTERA   MARINA. 


and  if  so,  ive  can  easily  conceive  how  the  Silurian  anthracite 
of  our  country  may  be  altogether  of  marine  origin,  and 
■  may  yet  exhibit  in  its  microscopic  tubular  fibres  vestiges 
of  a  vegetation  higher  than  the  alga?, 

[It  were  well,  in  dealing  with  the  very  ancient  floras,  in 
which  equivocal  forms  occur  that  might  have  belonged  to 
either  the  land  or  the  sea,  to  keep  in  view  thoye  curious 
plants  of  the  present  time,  the  habitats  of  which  are  de- 
cidedly marine,  but  which  are  marked  by  many  of  the 
peculiarities  of  the  seed-bearing  plants  of  the  land.  The 
superiority  of  Zostera  to  the  common  sea  weeds  of  our 
coasts  appears  to  have  struck  in  the  north  of  Scotland  eyes 
very  little  practised  in  such  matters,  and  seems  to  have 
given  rise,  in  consequence,  to  a  popular  myth.  Zcstera 
marina   abounds    on  a   series    of   sand    banks,    partially 


432  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

uncovered  by  the  larger  stream  tides,  which  lie  directly 
opposite  the  town  of  Cromarty,  near  the  spot  pointed  out 
by  tradition  as  the  site  of  an  earlier  town,  which  was 
swept  away  some  two  or  three  hundred  years  ago  by  the 
encroachments  of  the  sea.  And  these  banks,  with  their 
thick  covering  of  green  Zostera,  used  to  be  pointed  out  by 
the  fishermen  of  the  place,  in  my  younger  days,  as  the 
ineadoxcs  of  the  old  town,  still  bearing  their  original  cover- 
ings of  vegetation,  —  a  vegetation  altered  no  doubt  by  the 
"sea  change"  that  had  come  over  it,  but  still  essentially 
the  same,  it  was  said,  as  that  which  had  smiled  around  the 
old  burgh,  and  not  at  all  akin  to  the  brown  kelp  or  tangle 
that  every  storm  from  the  boisterous  north-east  heaps  along 
the  shore.  It  was  virtually  aifirmed  that  the  luxuriant  ter- 
restrial grasses  of  ancient  Cromartv  had  made  a  virtue  of 
necessity  in  their  altered  circumstances;  and  that,  settling 
down  into  grasses  of  the  sea,  they  remained  to  testify  that 
an  ancient  Cromarty  there  had  once  been.  Zostera  marina^ 
like  most  plants  of  the  laud,  ripens  its  seeds  towards  the 
close  of  autumn ;  and  I  have  seen  a  smart  night's  frost  at 
this  season,  Avhen  coincident  with  a  stream  tide  that  laid 
bare  the  beds,  nip  its  seed-bearing  stems  by  thousands; 
and  have  found  them  strewed  along  the  beach  a  few  days 
aftei*,  with  all  their  gi-ass-like  spikes  fully  developed,  and 
their  grain-like  seeds  charged  with  a  fixrinaceous  substance, 
which  one  would  scarce  expect  to  find  developed  in  the 
sea.  In  the  higher  reaches  of  the  Cromarty  Frith,  the 
Zostera  beds,  which  are  of  great  extent,  are  much  fre- 
quented, during  the  more  protracted  frosts  of  a  severe 
winter,  by  wild  geese  and  swans,  that  dig  up  and  leed 
upon  the  saccharine  roots  of  the  plant.  The  Zostera  of 
the  warmer  latitudes  attain  to  a  larger  size  than  those 
of  our  Scottish  seas.  "  A  southern  species,"  says  Loudon, 
^''Zostera  oceanica,  has  leaves  a  foot   long  and   an   inch 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


433 


broad.  It  is  nsed  as  a  thatch,  which  is  said  to  last  a 
century ;  bleaclies  wliite  with  expostire ;  and  furnishes  the 
rush-like  material  fi-om  -which  the  envelops  of  Italian  liquor 
flasks  are  prej^ared."  The  simple  rectilinear  venation  of 
ribbon-like  fronds,  usually  much  broken,  that  occurs  in  the 
Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone,  has  often  reminded  me  of  that 
exhibited  by  this  exotic  species  of  Zostera.] 

Associated  with  the  earliest  ichthyic  remains  of  the  Old 
Red  Sandstone,  we  find  ves^etable  orcranisms  in  such  abun- 


Fig  118. 


FUCOID. 

dance,  that  they  communicate  often  a  fissile  character  to 
the  stone  in  which  they  occur.  But,  existing  as  mere 
carbonaceous  markings,  their  state  of  keeping  is  usually 
so  bad,  that  they  tell  us  little  else  than  that  the  antiquely. 
37 


434  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

formed  fishes  of  this  remote  period  swam  over  sea  bottoms 
darkened  by  forests  of  algae.  The  prevailing  plant  was  one 
furnished  with  a  long,  smooth  stem,  which,  though  it  threw 
off,  in  the  alternate  order,  numerous  branches  at  least  half 
as  stout  as  itself,  preserved  its  thickness  for  considerable 
distances  without  diminution,  —  a  common  fucoidal  charac- 
teristic. We  find  its  remains  mixed  in  the  rock,  though 
sparingly,  with  those  of  a  rough-edged  plant,  knobbed  some- 
what like  the  thong-like  receptacles  of  Himanthalia  lorea^ 
which  also  threw  off  branches  like  the  other,  but  diminished 
more  rapidly.  A  greatly  more  minute  vegetable  organism 
of  the  same  beds,  characterized  by  its  bifid  partings,  which 
strike  off  at  angles  of  about  sixty,  somewhat  resembles  the 
small-fronded  variety  of  Dictyota  dichctoma,  save  that  the 
slim  terminations  of  the  frond  are  usually  bent  into  little 
hooks,  like  the  tendrils  of  the  j)ea  just  as  their  points  begin 
to  turn.  Another  rather  rare  plant  of  the  period,  existing 
as  a  broad,  irregularly  cleft  frond,  somewhat  resembling 

Fig.  119. 


y^^ 


FUCOIDS. 


that  of  a  modern  Cutleria  ox  Nitophyllum^  betrays  at  once, 
in  its  outline  and  general  appearance,  its  marine  origin ;  as 
does  also  an  equally  rare  contemporary,  Avhich,  judging 
from  its  appearance,  seems  to  have  been  a  true  fucus.  It 
exists  in  the  rock  as  if  simj)ly  drawn  in  Indian  ink ;  for  it 
exhibits  no  structure,  though,  as  in  some  of  the  ferns  of  the 


rOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  435 

Coal  Measures,  what  were  once  the  curls  of  its  leaflets 
continue  to  exist  as  sensible  hollows  on  the  surface.  It 
broadens  and  divides  atop  into  three  or  four  lobes,  and 
these,  in  turn,  broaden  and  divide  into  minor  lobes,  double 
or  ternate,  and  usually  rounded  at  their  terminations.  In 
general  appearance  the  plant  not  a  little  resembles  those 
specimens  of  I'^uciis  vesiculosiis  which  we  find  existing  in  a 
diminutive  form,  and  divested  of  both  the  receptacles  and 
the  air  vessels,  at  the  mouth  of  rivers.  Of  two  other  kinds 
of  plants  I  have  seen  only  confused  masses,  in  which  the 
individuals  were  so  crowded  together,  and  withal  so  frag- 
mentary and  broken,  that  their  separate  forms  could  not 
be  traced.  In  the  one  the  general  appearance  was  such 
as  might  be  produced  by  compressed  and  tangled  masses 
of  Chorda  fiUxim^  in  which  the  linear  and  even  tubular 
character  of  the  plant  could  be  determined,  but  not  its 
continuous,  cord-like  aspect;  in  the  other,  the  fragments 
seemed  Avell  nigh  as  slim  as  hairs,  and  the  appearance  was 
such  as  might  be  prodnced  by  branches  of  that  common 
ectocarpus,  E.  littoraUs^  Avhich  may  be  seen  on  our  rocky 
coasts  roughening  at  low  Avater  the  stems  of  laminaria. 
When  highly  magnified,  a  mesial  groove  might  be  de- 
tected runninsT  alone:  each  of  the  hair-like  lines.  With 
these  marine  plants  Ave  occasionally  find  large  rectilinear 
stems,  resolved  into  a  true  coal,  but  retaining  no  organic 
character  by  Avhich  to  distinguish  them.  As  I  have  seen 
some  of  these  more  than  three  inches  in  diameter,  and, 
though  existing  as  mere  fragments,  several  feet  in  length, 
they  must,  it"  they  Avere  also  plants  of  the  sea,  have  ex- 
ceeded in  size  our  larscest  laminaria.*     And  such  are  the 

*  A  curious  set  of  these,  with  specimens  of  the  smooth-stemmccl  fucoid 
collected  by  Mr.  Jolin  Miller  of  Tlmrso,  —  a  meritorious  laborer  in  the 
geologic  field,  —  were  exhibited  at  Glasgow  to  the  Association.  The  larger 
stems  were  thickly  traversed  in  Mr.  J,  Miller's  specimens  by  diagonal 


436  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

few  vegetable  organisms,  of  apparently  aquatic  origin,  -which 
I  liave  hitherto  succeeded  in  detecting  in  the  Lower  Old 
Red  Sandstone  of  Scotland.*''  Tlieir  individual  numbers, 
however,  must  have  been  very  great,  though,  from  the 
destructible  character  of  their  tissues,  their  forms  have 
perished  in  the  stone.  The  immensely  developed  flagstones 
of  Caithness  seem  to  owe  their  dark  color  to  orsranic  matter 
mainly  of  vegetable  origin.  So  strongly  bituminous,  indeed, 
are  some  of  the  beds  of  dingier  tint,  that  they  flame  in  the 
fire  like  slates  steeped  in  oil. 

The  remains  of  a  terrestrial  vegetation  in  this  deposit  are 
greatly  scantier  than  those  of  its  marine  plants ;  but  they 
must  be  regarded  as  possessing  a  peculiar  interest,  as,  with 
the  exception  of  the  spore  cases  of  the  Ludlow  rocks,  the 
oldest  of  their  class,  in  at  least  the  British  islands,  whose 
true  place  in  the  scale  can  be  satisfactorily  established.  In 
the  flagstones  of  Orkney  there  occurs,  though  very  rarely, 
.;-^a  minute  vegetable  organism,  which  I  have  elsewhere  de- 
scribed  as   having  much  the  appearance   of  one  of  our 


lines,  which  seemed,  however,  to  be  merely  lines  of  rhomboidal  fracture 
in  tlic  glassy  coal  into  which  the  plants  were  converted,  and  not  one  of 
their  original  characters. 

*  I  must,  however,  add,  that  there  was  found  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Stromness  about  fifteen  years  ago,  by  Dr.  John  Fleming,  a  curious 
nondescript  vegetable  organism,  wliicli,  though  equivocal  in  character 
and  appearance,  was  in  all  probability  a  plant  of  the  sea.  It  consisted  of 
a  flattened  cylinder,  in  some  of  the  specimens  exceeding  a  foot  in  length 
by  an  inch  in  breadth,  and  traversed  on  both  the  upper  and  under  sides 
by  a  mesial  groove  extending  to  the  extremities.  It  bore  no  external 
markings,  and  the  section  exhibited  but  an  indistinct  fibrous  stnicture, 
sufficient,  however,  to  indicate  its  vegetable  origin.  I  have  not  hitherto 
succeeded  in  finding  for  myself  specimens  of  this  organism,  which  has 
been  named  provisionally,  by  Dr.  Fleming,  Stroma  obscura ;  but  it  seems 
not  improbable  that  certain  supposed  fragments  of  wood,  detected  by  Mr. 
Charles  Peach  in  the  Caithness  Flagstones,  but  which  do  not  exhibit  the 
woody  structure,  may  have  belonged  to  it. 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


437 


■~^ 


smaller  fonis,  such  as  the  maitlcnhair- 
spleenwoit,  or  dwarf  moonwort.  It 
consists  of  a  minute  stem,  partially 
covered  l)y  what  seems  to  be  a  small 
sheath  or  hollow  bract,  and  bifurcates 
into  two  fronds  or  pinna",  fringed  by 
from  ten  to  twelve  leaflets,  tiiat  nearly 
impinge  on  each  other,  and  somewhat 
resemble  in  their  mode  of  arranijement 
the  leaflets  of  one  of  our  commonest 
Aspleniums, — As2^lenium  trick omanes. 
One  of  our.  highest  authorities,  how- 
ever, in  such  matters  (Professor  Bal- 
four of  Edinburgh)  questions  whether 
this  oi'ganism  be  in  reality  a  fern,  and 
describes  it  from  the  specimen  on  the 
table,  in  the  Palajontological  chapter 
of  his  admirable  Class  Book,  simply  aa- 
"  a  remarkable  pinnate  frond."  (Fig. 
13,  p.  56.)  We  find  it  associated  Avith 
the  remains  of  a  terrestrial  plant  allied 
to  lepidodendron,  and  which  in  size  and 
general  appearance  not  a  little  resem- 
bles one  of  our  commonest  club  mosses, 
—  Lycopodimn   clavatum*    It  sends 


*  I  figured  this  species  from  an  imperfect 

Cromarty    specimen  fifteen    years    ago.     (See 

"  Old  Red  Sandstone,"  first  edition,  1841,  Plate 

VIL  Fig.  4).    Of  the  greatly  better  specimens 

now  figured  I  owe  the  larger  one  (Fig.  120)  to 

Mrs.  Mill,  Thurso,  who  detected  it  in  the  richly 

fossiliferous  flagstones  of  the  locality  in  which 

she  resides,  and  kindly  made  it  over  to  me;  and 

the  specimen  of  which  I  have  given  a  magnificent  representation  (Fig.  12, 

p.  55i  to  my  friend  Mr.  Robert  Dick.    I  have,  besides,  seen  several  spcci- 

87* 


438  ONTHELESSKNOWN^ 

out  its  branches  in  exactly  the  same  style,  —  some  short 
and  simple,  others  branched  like  the  parent  stem,  —  in  an 
arrangement  approximately  alternate ;  and  is  eveiyAvhere 
covered,  stem  and  branch,  by  thickly  set  scale-like  leaflets, 
that,  suddenly  narrowing,  terminate  in  exceedingly  slim 
points.  It  has,  however,  pi'oportionally  a  stouter  stem 
than  Lycopodium  ;  its  leaves,  when  seen  in  2:)rofile,  seem 
more  rectilinear  and  thin ;  and  none  of  its  branches  yet 
found  bear  the  fructiferous  stalk  or  spike.  Its  resemblance, 
however,  to  this  commonest  of  the  Lycopodia,  —  a  plant 
that  may  be  gathered  by  handfuls  on  the  moors  by  Avhich 
the  flagstones  are  covered,  —  is  close  enough  to  suggest  a 
new  reading  of  the  familiar  adage  on  the  meeting  of  ex- 
tremes.  Between  the  times  of  this  ancient  fossil,  —  one 
of  the  oldest  of  land  plants  yet  known,  —  and  those  of  the 
existing  club  moss  that  now  scatters  its  light  spores  by 
millions  over  the  dead  and  blackened  remains  of  its  remote 
predecessor,  many  creations  must  have  intervened,  and 
many  a  prodigy  of  the  vegetable  world  appeared,  especially 
in  the  earlier  and  middle  periods,  —  Sigillaria,  Favularia, 
Knorria,  and  Ulodendron,  —  that  have  had  no  representa- 
tives in  the  floras  of  latter  times;  and  yet  here,  flanking 
the  immense  scale  at  both  its  ends,  do  we  find  plants  of  so 
nearly  the  same  form  and  type,  that  it  demands  a  careful 
survey  to  distinguish  their  points  of  difference.  Here, 
for  instance,  to  illustrate  the  fact,  is  there  a  specimen  of 
Lycopodium  clavatum^  from  one  of  these  Caithness  moors, 
that  agrees  branch  for  branch,  and  both  in  the  disposition 
of  its  scales  and  in  general  outline,  with  the  specimen  in 
the  stone.  What  seems  to  be  an  early  representative  of 
the    Calamites   occurs   in   the   same   beds.      Some   of  the 

mens  of  the  same  organism,  in  a  better  or  worse  state  of  keeping,  in  the 
interesting  collection  of  the  Rev.  Charles  Clouston,  Sandwick,  near  Strom' 
ness. 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  439 

specimens  are  of  large  size,  —  at  least  from  nine  inches  to  a 
foot  in  circumference,  —  and  retain  their  thickness,  though 
existing  as  fragments  several  feet  in  length,  with  but  little 
diminution  throughout.  They  resembled  the  interior  casts 
of  Calamites  in  being  longitudinally  furrowed  ;  but  the 
furrows  are  flatter,  and  are  themselves  minutely  striated 
lengthwise  by  lines  as  fine  as  hairs;  and,  instead  of  present- 
ing any  appearance  of  joints,  there  run  diagonally  across 
the  stems,  interrupted  and  very  irregular  lines  of  knobs. 
These  I  find  referred  to  by  Dr.  Joseph  Hooker,  in  describ- 
ing a  set  of  massive  but  ill  preserved  remains  of  the  same 
organism  detected  in  South  Ness  quarry,  near  Lerwick,  by 
the  Hon.  Mr.  Tuifnell,  as  taking,  in  two  of  the  specimens, 
"the  appearance  of  transverse  knobs  and  bars  (mayhap 
spirally  arranged)  that  cross  the  strite  obliquely.  But 
though  the  knobs,"  he  adds,  "  may  perhaps  indicate  a 
peculiar  character  of  the  plants,  they  have  more  probably 
been  caused  by  pressure  during  silicification."  As,  how- 
ever, they  also  occur  in  the  best  preserved  fragment  of  the 
plant  which  I  have  yet  seen,  —  a  Thurso  specimen  which  I 
owe  to  my  friend  Mr.  Dick,  —  I  deem  it  best  to  regard 
them,  provisionally  at  least,  as  one  of  the  characteristics  of 
the  plant.  I  may  mention,  that  Avhile  I  disinterred  one 
of  my  specimens  from  the  Thurso  flagstones,  where  it 
occurred  among  remains  of  Dipterus  and  Asterolepis,  I 
derived  another  specimen  from  the  great  overlying  forma- 
tion of  pale  Red  Sandstone  to  which  tlie  lofty  hills  of  Hoy 
and  the  tall  mural  precipices  of  Dunnet  Head  belong ;  and 
that  this  plant  is  the  only  organism  which  has  yet  been 
found  in  this  uppermost  member  of  the  Lower  Old  Red,  to 
at  least  the  north  of  the  Moray  Frith.  Another  apparently 
terrestrial  organism  of  the  lower  formation,  of,  however, 
rare  occurrence,  very  much  resembles  a  sheathing  bract  or 
spathe.     It  is  of  considerable  size,  —  from  four  to  six  inches 


440  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

in  length,  by  from  two  to  three  inches  in  breadth,  —  of  a 
broadly  elliptical  and  yet  somewhat  lanceolate  form,  deeply 
but  irregularly  corrugated,  the  ruga?  exhibiting  a  tendency 
to  converge  towards  both  its  lower  and  upper  terminations, 
and  with,  in  some  instances,  what  seems  to  be  the  fragment 
of  a  second  sj^athe  spi-inging  from  its  base.  Another  and 
much  smaller  vegetable  organism  of  the  same  beds  presents 
the  form  of  a  spathe-enveloped  bud  or  unblown  flower 
wrapped  up  in  its  calyx ;  but  all  the  specimens  which  I 
have  yet  seen  are  too  obscure  to  admit  of  certain  deter- 
mination, I  may  here  mention,  that  curious  markings, 
which  have  been  regarded  as  impressions  made  by  vege- 
tables that  had  themselves  disappeared,  have  been  detected 
during  the  last  twelvemonth  in  a  quarry  of  the  Lower  Old 
Red  Sandstone  near  Huntly,  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Mackay  of 
Rhynie.  They  are  very  curious  and  very  puzzling ;  but 
though  some  of  the  specimens  present  the  appearance  of  a 
continuous  midrib,  that  throws  off,  with  a  certain  degree 
of  regularity,  apparent  leaflets,  I  am  inclined  to  regard 
them  rather  as  lying  within  the  province  of  the  ichnologist 
than  of  the  fossil  botanist.  They  bear  the  same  sort  of 
resemblance  to  a  long,  thickly-leaved  frond,  like  that  of  the 
"  hard  fern,"  that  the  cast  of  a  many-legged  annelid  does 
to  a  club  moss ;  and  I  was  struck,  on  my  first  walk  along 
the  Portobello  beach,  after  examining  a  specimen  kindly 
sent  me  by  Mr.  Mackay,  to  see  how  nearly  the  tract  of  a 
small  shore  crab  [Carcinus  3Imnas)  along  the  wet  sand 
resembled  them,  in  exhibiting  what  seemed  to  be  an  ob- 
scure midrib  frimjed  with  leaflets. 

But  the  genuine  vegetable  organism  of  the  formation, 
indicative  of  the  highest  rank  of  any  yet  found  in  it,  is  a 
true  wood  of  the  cone-bearing  order.  I  laid  open  the 
nodule  which  contains  this  specimen,  in  one  of  the  ichthyo- 
lite  beds  of  Cromarty,  rather  more  than  eighteen  years 


FOSSIL   FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  441 

ago ;  but  though  I  described  it,  in  the  first  edition  of  my 
little  work  on  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  in  1841,  as  exhibit- 
ing the  woody  fibre,  it  was  not  until  1845  that,  with  the 
assistance  of  the  optical  lai)idary,  I  subjected  its  structure 
to  the  test  of  the  microscope.  It  turned  out,  as  I  had 
anticii)ated,  to  be  the  portion  of  a  tree ;  and  on  my  submit- 
ting the  prepared  specimen  to  one  of  our  highest  authori- 
ties,—  the  late  Mr.  William  Nicol,  —  he  at  once  decided 
that  the  "reticulated  texture  of  the  transverse  section, 
though  somewhat  compressed,  clearly  indicated  a  coniferous 
origin."  I  may  add,  that  this  most  ancient  of  Scottish 
lignites  presents  several  peculiarities  of  structure.  Like 
some  of  the  Araucarians  of  the  warmer  latitudes,  it  ex- 
hibits no  lines  of  yearly  growth;  its  medullary  rays  are 
slender,  and  comparatively  inconspicuous ;  and  the  discs 
which  mottle  the  sides  of  its  sap-chambers,  when  viewed  in 
the  longitudinal  section,  are  exceedingly  minute,  and  are 
ranged,  so  far  as  can  be  judged  in  their  imperfect  state  of 
keeping,  in  the  alternate  order  peculiar  to  the  Araucarians. 
On  what  perished  land  of  the  early  Paleozoic  ages  did  this 
venerably  antique  tree  cast  root  and  flourish,  when  the 
extinct  genera  Pterichthys  and  Coccosteus  were  enjoying 
life  by  millions  in  the  surrounding  seas,  long  ere  the  flora 
or  fauna  of  the  Coal  Measures  had  begun  to  be  ? 

I  may  be  here  permitted  to  mention,  that  in  a  little 
volume,  written  in  reply  to  a  widely  known  and  very  in- 
genious work  on  the  Development  hypothesis,  I  described 
and  figured  this  unequivocally  genuine  lignite,  in  order  to 
show  that  a  true  wood  takes  its  place  among  the  earliest 
terrestrial  plants  known  to  the  geologist,  I  at  the  same 
time  mentioned,  —  desirous,  of  course,  that  the  facts  of  the 
question  should  be  fairly  stated,  whatever  their  bearing,  — 
that  the  nodule  in  which  it  occurred  had  been  partially 
washed  out  of  the  fish  bed  in  which  I  found  it,  by  the 


442  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

action  of  the  surf;  and  my  opponent,  fixing  on  the  circum- 
stance, insinuated,  in  the  answer  with  wliich  he  honored 
me,  tliat  it  liad  not  belonged  to  the  bed  at  all,  but  had 
been  derived  from  some  other  formation  of  later  date.  He 
ought,  however,  to  have  taken  into  account  my  further 
statement,  namely,  that  the  same  nodule  Avhich  enclosed 
the  lignite  contained  part  of  another  fossil,  the  well  marked 
scales  of  Diplacanthus  striatus,  an  ichthyolite  restricted, 
like  the  Coccosteus  (a  specimen  of  which  occurred  in  a 
neighboring  nodule),  to  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone 
exclusively.  If  there  be  any  value  whatever  in  palseonto- 
logical  evidence,  this  Cromarty  lignite  must  have  been 
deposited  in  a  sea  inhabited  by  the  Coccosteus  and  Dipla- 
canthus. It  is  demonstrable  that,  while  yet  in  the  recent 
state,  a  Diplacanthus  lay  down  and  died  beside  it ;  and  the 
evidence  in  the  case  is  unequivocally  this,  that  in  the  oldest 
portion  of  the  oldest  terrestrial  flora  yet  known,  there 
occurs  the  fragment  of  a  tree  quite  as  high  m  the  scale  as 
the  stately  Norfolk  Island  pine,  or  the  noble  cedar  of 
Lebanon. 

[I  have  failed  hitherto  in  finding  any  remains  of  terres- 
trial plant-covered  surfaces  in  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  of 
Scotland,  though  decided  traces  of  desiccated  sub-aerial 
ones  are  not  rare.  Shallows  and  banks  seem  to  have  been 
numei'ous  during  the  period  of  at  least  the  Lower  forma- 
tion. The  flagstones  of  Caithness  and  Orkney,  and  the 
argillaceous  fish  beds  of  Cromarty  and  Ross,  not  only 
abound  in  the  ripple-marked  surfaces  of  a  shallow  sea, 
but  also  in  cracked  and  flawed  planes  that  must  have  dried 
and  split  into  polygonal  partings  in  the  air  and  the  sun. 
The  appearance  of  these  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  town 
of  Thurso,  about  half  a  mile  to  the  east  of  the  river,  is  not 
a  little  curious.  Bearing  throughout  the  general  dingy 
hue  of  the  flagstones,  they  yet  consist  of  alternating  beds 


FOSSIL    FLOnAS    OF    SCOTLAND  .   443 

of  two  distinct  eliaracters  and  qualities.  The  one  kind, 
fissile,  finely  grained,  and  sharply  ri])pl(!-raarkcd,  seems  to 
have  been  deposited  in  shallow  water ;  the  other,  not  fissile, 
but,  if  I  may  so  speak,  felted  together  so  as  to  yield  with 
difticulty  to  the  hammer  in  any  dii-ection,  and  traversed  by 
polygonal  partings,  filled  up  usually  by  the  substance  of  the 
overlying  stratum,  appears  to  have  had  a  diflferent  origin. 
The  state  of  keeping,  too,  in  which  the  ichthyic  remains  of 
these  alternatins:  beds  occur  is  alwavs  very  different.  The 
smaller  and  more  delicately  organized  fishes  are  never  found 
entire,  save  in  the  fissile,  finely  grained  beds ;  in  the  others 
we  detect  only  scattered  fragments ;  and  even  these,  unless 
they  belonged  to  the  robust  Asterolepis  or  his  congeners, — 
which,  however,  in  these  beds  they  usually  do,  —  much 
broken.  The  polygonal  partings  seem  to  indicate  that 
these  toughly-felted  beds,  whose  very  style  of  weathering' 
—  rough,  gnarled,  fretted  into  globose  protuberances  and 
irregular  hollows  —  shows  that  it  had  not  been  formed  by 
quiet  deposition,  must  have  had  their  broad  backs  raised 
for  a  time  above  the  surface  of  the  water,  to  be  desiccated 
in  the  hot  sun.  And  the  fragmentary  state  of  the  fossils 
which  they  contain  seems  to  point,  Avith  the  roughnesses 
of  their  weathered  surfaces,  to  some  peculiarity  in  their 
origin.  The  recollection  Avhich  they  awoke  in  my  mind 
with  each  visit  I  paid  them  for  three  years  together,  may 
probably  indicate  what  that  origin  was.  I  had  a  relation 
who  died  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  who  passed 
many  years  in  British  Guiana,  in  the  colony  of  Berbice,  and 
whose  graphic  descri[)tions  of  that  jiart  of  South  America 
made  a  strong  impression  upon  me  when  a  boy,  and  still 
dwells  in  my  memory.  He  was  settled  on  a  cotton  planta- 
tion near  the  coast  side  ;  and  so  exceedingly  flat  was  the 
surrounding  country,  that  the  house  in  which  he  dwelt, 
though  nearly  two  miles  distant  from  the  shore,  stood  little 


c 


444  ONTIIELESSKXOWN 

more  than  five  feet  above  its  level.  The  soil  consisted  of  a 
dark  gray  consolidated  mud  ;  and  in  looking  seawards  from 
the  margin  of  the  land,  there  was  nothing  to  be  seen,  Avhen 
the  tide  fell,  save  dreary  mud  flats  Avhole  miles  in  extent, 
with  the  line  of  blue  wr:ter  beyond  stretching  along  the 
distant  horizon.  These  mud  flats  were  much  frequented 
by  birds  of  the  wader  faiiiily,  that  used  to  come  and  fish  in 
the  shalloAv  pools  for  the  small  fry  that  had  lingered  behind 
when  the  tide  fell ;  and  my  cousin,  a  keen  sportsman  in  his 
day,  has  told  me  that  he  used  to  steal  upon  them  in  his 
mud  shoes,  —  flat  boards  attached  to  the  soles,  like  the 
snow  shoes  of  the  higher  latitudes,  —  and  enjoy  rare  sport 
in  knocking  down  magnificent  game,  such  as  "  the  roseate 
spoonbill"  and  "gorgeous  flamingo."  There  were  times, 
however,  when  the  mud  shoe  proved  of  no  avail,  and  the 
flat  expanse  remained  impassable  for  weeks,  — 

"  A  boggy  syrtis,  neither  sea 
Nor  good  dry  land." 

The  coast,  —  directly  impinged  on  by  the  drift  cun-ent,  and 
beaten  by  the  long  roll  of  waves  which  had  first  begun  to 
rise  under  the  impulsions  of  the  trade  winds  on  the  African 
coast  two  thousand  miles  away,  —  was  much  exposed  to 
tempests  ;  and  after  every  fresh  storm  from  the  east,  a 
huge  bank  of  mud  used  to  come  rolling  in  from  the  sea, 
three  or  four  feet  abreast,  and  remain  wholly  impassable 
until,  during  some  two  or  three  neap  tides,  its  surface  had 
been  exposed  to  a  tropical  sun,  and  partially  consolidated 
by  the  heat.  And  then  the  M'aste  would  become  passable 
as  before,  and  the  chopped  and  broken  surface,  exposed  to 
the  ordinary  action  of  the  sea,  and  -to  gradual  depositions 
during  flood,  would  begin  to  be  smoothed  over,  and  the 
birds  would  find  themselves  no  longer  safe.  Now,  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  we  have  here  the  conditions  necessary 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAXD.  445 

to  the  formation  of  the  Thurso  deposits.     Let  us  suppose, 
near  where  Thurso  now  stands,  a  wide  tract  of  flat  mud 
banks  in  a  sea  so  shallow  as  to  be  laid  dry  at  ebb  for  miles 
together.     Let  us  further  suppose  periods  of  tranquil  depo- 
sition or  re-arrangement,  during  which  one  ripple-marked 
stratum  is  laid  quietly  down   over  another,  and  the  fish, 
killed  by  accident,  or  left  stranded  by  the  evaporation  of 
the  little  pools,  are  covered  up,  like  the  plants  in  a  botanist's 
drying-book,  in  a  state  of  complete  entireness.     Let  us  yet 
further   suppose   great   mud   banks   driven    by   occasional 
tempests  from  the  deeper  Avater  beyond,  and  so  heaped  up 
over  these  sedimentary  beds  as  to  be  exposed  during  even 
the  flood  of  neap  tides  to  the  desiccating  influences  of  the 
atmosphere  and  the  sun,  until  the  surface  has  become  hard 
as  a  sun-burned   brick,   and   has   chopped  into  polygonal 
partings,   with  wide   rents  between.     And  finally,   let   us 
suppose  the  whole  in  this  state  laid  under  water  at  the 
return  of  stream  tides,  and  exposed  to  the  ordinary  sedi- 
mentary  action.      Does   it   not    seem    pi-obable    that   the 
alternating  beds  in  all  their  conditions  would  be  given  us 
by  such  a  process?     In  the  stratum  represented  by  the 
niud  bank,  the  stone  would  be  of  what  I  have  termed  a 
felted.,  not  a  fissile  character;  its  organic  remains  would 
exist  in  a  fragmentary  and  scattered  state,  —  for,  torn  up 
from  their  places  of  original  deposition,  and  rolled  onwards 
in  the  storm-impelled  mud,  they  could  not  fail  to  be  broken 
up  and  dispersed ;  and  further,  they  would  be  in  large  part 
those  of  bulky  deep-sea  fishes.     And  lastly,  the  surface  of 
these  beds  would  be  polygonally  cracked  and  flawed,  and 
the  wider  cracks  filled  up  b-  the  substance  of  the  overlvincr 
strata.     And  these  overlyir  g  strata,  on  the  other  hand, — 
the  result  of  a  period  of  quiet  deposition  in  shallow  water, 
—  would  be  regularly  bedded,  and  their  ichthyic  remains, 
consisting  mahily  of  small  lil  toral  fishes,  would  be  preserved 
38 


446  ONTHELESSKNOWN 

in  a  state  of  comparative  entireness.  For,  however,  sucli 
numerous  repetitions  of  alternately  felted  and  fissile  ripple- 
marked  strata  as  we  find  in  the  neighborhood  of  Thurso,  — 
repetitions  carried  on  for  hundreds  of  feet  in  vertical  extent, 
—  we  require  yet  another  condition,  —  that  condition  of 
gradual  subsidence  in  the  general  crust  which  can  alone 
account  for  the  fact  so  often  pressed  upon  the  geologist  in 
exploring  the  Coal  Measures,  that  in  deposits  tliousands  of 
feet  in  thickness,  each  stratum  m  succession  had  been  laid 
down  in  a  shallow  sea.] 

It  is  a  curious   circumstance,  that   the   Old   Red   flag- 
stones which  lie  along  the  southern  flanks  of  the  Gram- 
pians, and  are  represented  by  the   gray    stone   known  in 
commerce  as  the  Arbroath  Pavement,  have  not,  so  far  as 
is  yet  known,  an  organism  in  common  with  the  Old  Red 
flao-stones  of  the  north.     I  at  one  tune  supposed  that  the 
rectilinear,     smooth-stemmed    fucoid,    already     described, 
occurred  in  both  series,  as  the  gray  stones  have  also  their 
smooth-stemmed,  rectilinear,  tape-like  organism  ;    but  the 
points  of  resemblance  were  too  few  and  simple  to  justify 
the  conclusion  that  they  were  identical,  and  I  have  since 
ascertained  that  they  were  entirely  diflerent  plants.     The 
fucoid  of  the    Caithness    flagstones    threw  oft",  as  I  have 
shown,    in    the    alternate    order,    numerous     ribbon-like 
branches  or   fronds ;     Avhereas   the   ribbon-like   fronds   or 
branches  of  the  Forfarshire  plant  rose  by  dozens  from  a 
common  root,  like  the  fronds  of  Zostera,  and  somewhat 
resembled  a  scourge  of  cords  fastened  to  a  handle.     Con- 
temporary with  this  organism  of  the  gray  flagstone  forma- 
tion, and  thickly  occupying  the  planes  on  which  it  rests, 
there  occur  fragments  of  twisted  stems,  some  of  them  from 
three  to  four  inches  in  diameter  (though  represented  by 
but  mere  films  of  carbonaceous  matter),   and  irregularly 
streaked,  or  rather  wrinJclecl^  longitudinally,  like  the  bark 


FOSSIL    1-LOKAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  447 

of  some  of  our  forest  trees,  thougli  on  a  smaller  scale. 
With  these  "\ve  find  in  considerable  abundance  irregulaHy- 
shaped  patches,  also  of  carbonaceous  matter,  reticulated 
into  the  semblance  of  polygonal,  or,  in  some  instances, 
egg-shaped  meshes,  and  which  remind  one  of  pieces  of 
ill  Avoven  lace.  When  first  laid  open,  these  meshes  are 
filled  each  with  a  carbonaceous  speck  ;  and,  from  their 
supposed  resemblance,  in  the  aggregated  form,  to  the  eggs 
of  the  frog  in  their  albuminous  euA^elop,  the  quarriers 
term  them  "  puddock  [frog]  spawn."  The  slabs  in  which 
they  occur,  thickly  covered  over  with  their  vegetable 
impressions,  did  certainly  remind  me,  when  I  first  exam- 
ined them  some  fifteen  years  ago,  of  the  bottom  of  some 
stagnant  ditch  beside  some  decaying  hedge,  as  it  appears 
in  middle  spring,  when  paved  with  fragments  of  dead 
branches  and  withered  gi-ass,  and  mottled  with  its  life- 
impregnated  patches  of  the  gelid  substance  regarding 
Avhich  a  provincial  poet  tells  his  readers,  in  classical 
Scotch,  that 

"  Puddock-spuc  is  fu'  o'  e'en, 
An'  every  e'e  's  a  pu-head."  * 

Higher  authorities  than  the  quarriers, —  among  the  rest, 
the  late  Dr.  Mantell, — have  been  disposed  to  regard  these 
polygonal  markings  as  the  fossilized  spawn  of  ancient 
Batrachians  ;  but  there  now  seems  to  be  evidence  enough 
from  which  to  conclude  that  they  are  the  remains,  not  of 
the  eggs  of  an  animal,  but  of  the  seed  of  a  plant.  Such 
was  the  view  taken  many  years  ago  by  Dr.  I'leming, — the 
original  discoverer,  let  me  add,  of  fossils  both  in  those 
Upper  and  Middle  Old  Red  Sandstone  deposits  that  lie 
in   Scotland   to  the   south   of   the    Grampians.      "  These 

*  "Frogspawn  is  full  of  eyes  [that  is,  black  eye-like  points],  and  every 
eye  is  a  tadpole." 


448 


ON   THE   LESS    KNOWN 


organisms,"  Ave  find  him  saying,  in  a  paper  published  in 
"Cheek's  Edinburgh  Journal"  (1831),  "occur  in  the 
form  of  circular  flat  i^atches,  not  equalling  an  inch  in 
diameter,  and  composed  of  numerous  smaller  contiguous 
pieces.  They  are  not  unlike  what  might  be  expected  to 
result  from  a  compressed  berry,  such  as  the  bramble  oi* 
the  rasp.  As,  however,  they  are  found  adjacent  to  the 
narrow  leaves  of  gramineous  [looking]  vegetables,  and 
chiefly  in  clay  slate,  originally  lacustrine  silt,  it  is  probable 
that  they  constituted  the  conglobate  panicles  of  extinct 
species  of  the  genus  Junicus  or  Sparzanium,"  From 
specimens  subsequently  found  by  Dr.  Fleming,  and  on 
which  he  has  erected  his  species  Parka  deeipiens,  it  seems 

Fig  121. 


PARKA   DECIPIENS. 


evident  that  the  nearly  circular  bodies  (which  in  all  the 
better  preserved  instances  circumscribe  the  small  poly- 
gonal ones)  Avere  set  in  receptacles  somewhat  resembling 
the  receptacle  or  QViXys.  of  the  strawberry  or  rasp.  Judg- 
ing from  one  of  the  specimens,  this  calyx  appears  to  have 
consisted  of  Aa  e  pieces,  which  united  in  a  central  stem, 
and  Avere  traversed  by  broad  irregularly  diverging  striae. 
And  the  spaAvn-like  patches  of  Carmylie  appear  to  be 
simply  ill  preserA'ed  specimens  of  this  fruit,  AvhateA'er  its 
true  character,  in  Avhich  the  minute  circular  portions, 
divested  of  the   receptacle   and   stem,    had  been    thrown 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  449 

into  irregular  forms  by  the  joint  agency  of  pressure  and 
decay.  The  great  abundance  of  these  organisms, — for  so 
abundant  are  they,  that  visitors  to  the  Carmylie  quarries 
find  they  can  carry  away  with  them  as  many  specimens 
as  they  please, — may  be  regarded  as  of  itself  indicative 
of  a  vegetable  origin.*  It  is  not  in  the  least  strange, 
however,  that  they  should  have  been  taken  for  patches 
of  spawn.  The  large-grained  spa\\Ti  of  fishes,  such  as  the 
lump-fish,  salmon,  or  sturgeon,  might  be  readily  enough 
mistaken,  in  even  the  recent  state,  for  the  detached 
spherical-seed  vessels  of  fniit,  such  as  the  bramble-berry, 
the  stone-bramble,  or  the  rasp.  "  Hang  it ! "  I  once  heard 
a  countryman  exclaim,  on  helping  himself  at  table  to  a 
spoonful  of  Caviare,  which  he  had  mistaken  for  a  sweet- 
meat, and  instantly,  according  to  Milton,  "  with  sputter- 
ing noise  rejected," — "  Hang  it  for  nasty  stuff! — I  took  it 
for  bramble  berry  jam." 

Along  with  these  curious  remains  Dr.  Fleming  found  an 
organism  which  in  fomi  somewhat  resembles  the  spike  of 
one  of  the  grasses,  save  that  the  better  preserved  bracts 
.terminate  in  fan  or  kidney-shaped  leaflets,  with  a  simple 
venation  radiating  from  the  base.  It  is  probably  a  fern, 
more  minute  in  its  pinnules  than  even  our  smallest  speci- 
mens of  true  maidenhair.  Its  stipes,  however,  seems  pro- 
portionally stouter  than  that  of  any  of  the  smaller  ferns 
with  which  I  am  acquainted.  But  the  state  of  keeping  of 
the  specimen  is  not  good,  nor  do  I  know  that  another  has 
yet  been  found.  Further,  in  the  same  beds  Dr.  Fleming 
found  a  curious  nondescript  vegetable,  or  rather  part  of  a 
vegetable,  with  smooth  narrow  stems,  resembling  those  of 

*  Mr.  Page  figures,  in  his  "  Advanced  Text  Book  of  Geology  "  (p.  127), 

a  few  circular  markings  from  the  Forfarshire  beds,  which  he  still  regards 

as  spawn,  probably  that  of  a  Crustacean,  and  which  certainly  differ  greatly 

in  appearance  from  the  markings  found  enclosed  in  the  apparent  spathes. 

38* 


450 


ON    THE    LESS    KXOWN 


the  smooth-stemmed  organism  of  the  Caithness  flagstones, 

Fig.  322. 


Fix- 123. 


but  nnlilve  it  in  the  circumstance  that  its  detached  nearly 
parallel  stalks  anastomose  with  each  other  by- 
means  of  cross  branches,  that  unite  them  in 
the  middle,  somewhat  in  the  style  of  the 
Siamese  twins.  I  have  heard  the  doctor 
suggest,  but  know  not  whether  lie  has 
placed  the  remark  on  record,  that  these  par- 
allel stems  may  have  been  but  the  internal 
fibres  of  some  larger  plant,  whose  more  suc- 
culent portions  have  disappeared ;  and  cer- 
tainly, Avhile  such  instances  of  anastomosis 
ai-e  rare  among  the  stems  of  plants,  they  are 
common  enough  among  their  internal  fibres., 
as  all  who  have  examined  the  macerated 
debris  of  a  kitchen-garden  or  a  turnijvfield 

must  have  had  occasion  to  remark.     We  sometimes,  how- 


FOSSIL    FLOKAS    OF   SCOTLAND.  451 

ever,  find  cases  of  anastomosis  among  the  stems  of  even  the 
higher  plants.  I  have-seen  oftenei'  than  once,  in  neglected 
hawthorn  hedges,  the  branch  of  one  plant  entering  into  the 
stem  of  another,  and  becoming  incorporated  with  its  sub- 
stance; and  we  are  told  by  Professor  Balfour,  that  this  kind 
of  chance  adhesion  is  often  seen  in  the  branches  of  the  ivy ; 
and  that  not  unfrequently,  by  a  similar  process,  the  roots 
of  contiguous  trees  are  united.  Nor  does  it  seem  improb- 
able, that  what  occasionally  takes  place  among  the  higher 
plants  of  the  present  time  may  have  been  comiiion  among 
some  of  the  comparatively  low  plants  of  so  ancient  a  period 
as  that  of  the  Middle  Old  Red  Sandstone.  This  formation 
of  the  gray  tilestones  has  furnished  one  vegetable  organism 
apparently  higher  in  the  scale  than  those  just  described,  in 
a  Avell  marked  Lepidodendron,  which  exhibits,  like  the 
Araucarian  of  the  Lower  Old  Red,  though  less  distinctly, 
the  internal  structure.  It  was  found  about  sixteen  years 
ago  in  a  pavement  quarry  near  Clockbriggs,  —  the  last 
station  on  the  Aberdeen  and  Forfar  Railway  as  the  trav- 
eller approaches  the  town  of  Forfar  from  the  north.  I 
owe  my  specimen  of  this  ancient  Lej^idodendron  to  Mr. 
William  Miller,  banker,  Dundee,  an  accomplished  geolo- 
gist, who  has  taken  no  little  trouble  in  determining  its 
true  history.  lie  has  ascertained  that  it  occurred  deep  in 
the  rock,  seventy-one  feet  from  the  surface ;  that  the  beds 
which  rested  over  it  were  composed,  in  the  descending  or- 
der,  first,  of  a  conglomerate  thirty  feet  thick;  secondly,  of 
a  red  rock  four  feet  thick ;  thirdly,  of  twenty-eight  feet  of 
the  soft  shaly  substance  known  to  the  quarriers  as  caulm ; 
and  fourthly,  of  more  than  nine  feet  of  gray  pavement, 
immediately  under  which,  in  a  soft,  argillaceous  stratum, 
lay  the  organism.  It  was  about  four  feet  in  length,  bulged 
out  at  the  lower  end  into  a  bulb-like  protuberance,  which 
may  have  been,  however,  merely  an  accidental  result  of  its 


452  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

Btate  of  keeping;  and  threw  off,  at  an  acute  angle,  two 
branches  about  a  foot  from  the  top.  It  Avas  covered  with 
a  bark  of  brittle  coal,  Avhich  is,  however,  wanting  in  all  the 
fragments  that  have  been  preserved ;  and  was  resolved  in- 
ternally into  a  brown  calcareous  substance  of  about  the 
hardness  of  ordinary  marble,  and  very  much  resembling 
that  into  which  the  petrifective  agencies  have  consolidated 
the  fossil  trees  of  Granton  and  Craigleith.  From  the  de- 
corticated condition  of  the  surviving  fragments,  and  the 
imperfect  preservation  of  the  interior  structure,  in  all  save 
the  central  })ortions  of  its  transverse  sections,  it  yields  no 
specific  marks  by  Avhich  to  distinguish  it ;  but  enough  re- 
mains in  its  irregular  network  of  cells,  devoid  of  linear 
arrangement,  and  untraversed  by  medullary  rays,  to  demon- 
strate its  genei'ic  standing  as  a  Lepidodendron, 

[It  has  been  questioned  whether  the  lower  place  in  the 
Old  Red  System  should  be  assigned  to  the  flagstones  of 
Caithness  and  Ross,  with  their  cliaracteristic  Dipterus  and 
Coccosteus  beds,  or  to  the  gray  tilestones  of  Forfar  and 
Kincardineshires,  with  their  equally  characteristic  Cepha- 
laspis.  The  evidence  on  the  point  is  certainly  not  so  con- 
clusive as  I  deemed  it  fifteen  years  ago,  when  our  highest 
authority  on  the  subject  not  only  regarded  the  tilestone  of 
the  Silurian  reo;ions  of  England  as  a  member  of  the  Old 
Red  Sandstone  (an  arrangement  which  I  am  still  disposed 
to  deem  the  true  one),  but  also  held  further,  that  there  had 
been  detected  in  this  formation  near  Downtown  Castle, 
Herefordshire,  broken  remains  of  Dipterus  macrolejndotiis, 
one  of  the  best  marked  ichthyolites  of  the  flagstones  of 
Caithness  and  Orkney.  A  great  and  unbroken  series  of 
fossilifei-ous  rocks,  with  Dipterus  at  its  base,  Cephalaspis  in 
its  medial  spaces,  and  Holoptychius  at  its  top,  might  well 
be  regarded  as  the  analogue  of  the  Old  Red  of  Scotland, 
with  the  Caithness  flagstones  ranged  at  its  bottom,  the 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  453 

Cephalaspis  beds  of  Forfarshire  placed  in  its  middle,  and 
the  Holoptychius  beds  of  Scot-Crag  and  Clashbiniiie  on  its 
upper  horizon  ;  but  since  that  time  the  tilestones  have  been 
transferred  to  the  Upper  Silurian  division  of  rocks,  and  the 
evidence  furnished  by  their  supposed  Dipterus  has  not  been 
confirmed.  And  as  the  Old  Red  Sandstones  of  Scotland 
have  no  true  fossiliferous  base,  but  rest  on  piimary  I'ocks 
both  to  the  south  and  north  of  the  Grampians,  it  may  be 
regarded  as  in  some  degree  a  moot  point  whether  the 
lowest  fossiliferous  beds  to  the  north  be  older  or  newer 
than  those  to  the  south,  or,  what  is  quite  possible,  of  the 
same  age.  Provisionally,  however,  I  have  arranged  my 
paper  on  the  supposition  that  the  Coccostean  formation  of 
the  north  is  the  lowest  and  oldest  of  the  three ;  and  this 
from  the  following  considerations.  In  the  first  place,  the 
Coccosteus  and  its  contemporaries  appear  in  the  north  at  a 
very  short  distance  above  the  base  of  the  system.  I  have 
disinterred  an  Osteolepis  from  a  fish  bed  near  Cromarty 
only  thirty-three  feet  over  the  great  conglomerate,  and  only 
a  hundred  and  twenty-nine  feet  over  the  granitic  gneiss 
beneath ;  whereas  the  Cephalaspis  beds  occur  high  above 
the  primary  base  of  the  system  in  the  south,  —  at  some  dis- 
tance over  even  the  thick  conglomerate  of  Stonehaven  and 
Dunnottar ;  and  under  this  conglomerate,  as  shown  in  the 
section  furnished  by  the  valley  of  the  North  Esk,  there  lies 
a  pale  red  sandstone  member  of  the  system,  estimated  by 
Colonel  Imrie  at  seven  hundred  and  eighty  feet  in  thick- 
ness. The  conglomerate  itself  he  estimates  at  twelve  hun- 
dred feet.  Adopting  as  correct  Colonel  Imrie's  section, 
taken  along  the  banks  of  the  North  Esk,  —  and  the  colo- 
nel was  unquestionably  a  truthful  observer," — the  Cepha- 
laspis beds  of  the  south  lie  nearly  two  thousand  (nineteen 
hundred  and  eighty)  feet  above  the  Azoic  slates  on  which 
the  Old  Red  Sandstone  of  Forfarshire  rests,  whereas  the 


454  ON    THE   LESS    KNOWN 

Coccosteus  Jind  Osteolepis  beds  of  the  north  lie  only  one 
hundred  and  twenty-nine  feet  over  the  Azoic  gneiss  on 
which  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  of  Cromarty  i-ests.  There 
is  thus  at  least  room  in  the  south  for  an  underlying  fossil- 
iferous  formation  between  that  of  the  Cephalaspis  and  the 
base  of  the  system,  but  none  in  the  north  beneath  that  of 
the  Coccosteus  and  its  base.  In  the  north  we  find  the 
room  lying  above,  between  the  Coccostean  and  Holop- 
tychian  formations,  and  represented  by  that  great  unfossil- 
iferous  deposit  of  pale  sandstone  to  which  the  hills  of  Hoy 
and  the  rocks  of  Duncansbay  Head  and  of  Tarbet  Ness 
belong.  Further,  in  the  second  place,  while  the  upper  or 
Holoptychian  formation  is  found  directly  overlying  that  of 
the  Coccosteus  in  only  one  locality,  —  Moray,  —  we  find  it 
directly  overlying  that  of  the  Cephalaspis  in  t%vo  widely  sep- 
arated localities ;  —  in  the  vast  band  of  Old  Red  which  runs 
diagonally  across  the  island  from  sea  to  sea,  parallel  to  the 
Grampian  chain,  and  in  the  immensely  developed  Red  Sand- 
stones of  England  and  Wales.  And  it  is  of  course  more 
probable  that  the  two  corroborative  instances  should  repre- 
sent the  natural  succession  of  the  formations,  and  the  single 
instance  the  accidental  gap  in  the  scale  consequent  on  the 
missing  formation,  than  that,  vice  versa,  the  solitary  in- 
stance should  represent  the  natural  succession,  while  the 
two  mutually  corroborative  ones  should  represent,  in  locali- 
ties widely  apart,  the  mere  accident  of  the  gap.  But,  in  the 
third  place,  I  attach  more  weight  to  a  conclusion  founded  on 
the  positive  character  of  the  groups  of  organic  remains 
by  which  the  three  great  formations  of  the  Old  Red  Sys- 
tem are  characterized,  than  I  do  to  either  of  these  con- 
siderations. The  organisms  of  the  Cephalaspian  deposits 
differ  generically,  and  in  their  whole  aspect,  from  both 
those  of  the  Coccostean  and  Holoptychian  formations ; 
whereas  the  organisms  of  the  Coccostean  formations,  while 


FOSSIL   FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  455 

they  resemble  generically  and  in  the  group  those  of  the 
Holoptychian  one,  mainly  differ  from  them  specifically. 
The  extreme  generic  difference  in  the  one  case  argues 
evidently  a  great  difference  va.  condition., —  the  lesser  spe- 
cific difference  in  the  other,  a  great  difference  in  point 
of  time.  The  Cephalaspian  formation  might,  as  a  fresh 
water  formation,  be  nearly  contemporary  Avith  either  of 
the  other  two,  or,  as  seems  more  probable,  interi)osed 
between  them  ;  while  they  themselves,  on  the  other  hand, 
generically  similar  and  decidedly  marine  in  their  character, 
must  have  been  so  widely  separated  in  time,  that  all  the 
species  of  the  lower  group  became  extinct  ere  those  of 
the  upper  one  had  been  ushered  into  being.  And  such 
are  some  of  the  considerations  that  still  lead  me,  notwith- 
standing the  failure  of  previous  evidence,  to  hold,  at  least, 
provisionally,  that  our  Scottish  flagstones  to  the  north  of 
the  Grampians  occupy  a  lower  horizon  than  our  Scottish 
tilestones  to  the  south.  It  must,  however,  be  stated,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  the  crustaceans  of  the  gray  tilestones 
of  Forfar  and  Kincardine  not  a  little  resemble  those  of 
the  Upper  Silurian  and  red  tilestone  beds  of  England ; 
and  that,  judging  from  the  ichthyodorulites  found  in  both, 
their  fishes  must  have  been  at  least  generically  allied. 
The  crustaceans  of  the  tapper  Silurian  of  Lesmahagow, 
too,  seem  certainly  much  akin  to  those  of  the  Forfarshire 
tilestones.]  / 

Above  this  gray  tilestone  formation  lies  the  Ui)per 
Old  Red  Sandstone,  with  its  peculiar  group  of  ichthyic 
organisms,  none  of  which  seem  specially  identical  Avith 
those  of  either  the  Caithness  or  the  Forfarshire  beds. 
For  it  is  an  interesting  circumstance,  suggestive  surely 
of  the  vast  periods  which  must  have  elapsed  during  its 
deposition,  that  the  great  Old  Red  System  has,  as  I  have 
just  said,  its  three  distinct  platforms  of  organic  existence, 


456  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

each  wholly  different  from  the  others.  Generically  and  in 
the  group,  however,  the  Upper  fishes  much  more  closely  • 
resemble,  I  repeat,  the  fishes  of  the  Lower  or  Caithness 
and  Cromarty  platform,  than  they  do  those  of  the  Forfar- 
shire and  Kincardine  one.  The  vegetable  remains  of  the 
Upper  formation  in  Scotland  are  both  rare  and  ill  pre- 
served. I  have  seen  what  I  deemed  fucoidal  markings 
dimly  impressed  on  the  planes  of  some  of  the  strata,  not 
in  the  carbonaceous  form  so  common  in  the  other  two 
formations,  but  as  mere  colored  films  of  a  deeper  red  than 
the  surrounding  matrix.  Further,  I  have  detected  in  the 
same  beds,  and  existing  in  the  same  state,  fragments  of  a 
Striated  organism,  which  may  have  formed  part  of  either  a 
true  calamite,  like  those  of  the  Coal  Measures,  or  of  some 
such  striated  but  jointless  vegetable  as  that  of  the  Lower 
Old  Red  of  Thurso  and  Lerwick.*     With  these  markings 

*  Since  these  sentences  wei'e  \vritten  I  have  seen  a  description  of  both  the 
plants  of  tlie  Upper  Old  Red  to  which  they  refer,  in  an  interesting  sketch  of 
tlie  geolog}'  of  Roxburgshire  by  the  Rev.  James  Duncan,  which  forms  part 
of  a  recent  publication  devoted  to  the  historyiand  antiquities  of  the  shire. 
"In  tho-red  quarry  of  Denholm  Hill  there  occurs,"  says  Mr.  Duncan,  "a 
stratum  of  soft  yellowish  sandstone,  which  contains  impressions  of  an 
apparent  fucoid  in  considerable  quantity.  One  or  several  linear  stems 
diverge  from  a  point,  and  throw  off  at  acute  angles,  as  they  grow  upwards, 
branches  or  leaves  very  similar  to  the  stem,  which  are  in  turn  subdivided 
into  others.  The  width  of  the  stalks  is  generally  about  a  quarter  of  an 
inch,  the  length  often  a  foot.  The  color  is  brown,  blackish-brown,  or 
grayish.  The  same  plant  also  occurs  in  the  whitestone  quarry  [an  over- 
lying bed]  in  the  form  of  Carbonaceous  impressions.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  that  it  is  a  fucoid.  The  general  mode  of  growth  greatly  resembles 
that  of  certain  seaweeds  ;  and  in  some  specimens  we  have  seen  the 
branches  dilated  a  little  at  the  extremities,  like  those  of  such  of  the  living 
fuci  as  expand  in  order  to  afford  space  for  the  fructification.  It  is  deserving 
of  remark,  that  the  plant  is  seldom  observed  lying  horizontally  on  the 
rock  in  a  direction  parallel  to  its  stratification,  but  rising  up  through  the 
layers,  so  as  only  to  be  seen  when  the  stone  is  broken  across;  as  if  it  had 
been  standing  erect,  or  kept  buoyant  in  water,  while  the  stony  matter  to 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  457 

ferns  are  occasionally  found  ;  and  to  one  of  these,  from  the 
light  which  it  throws  on  the  true  place  in  the  scale  of  a 
series  of  deposits  in  a  sister  country,  there  attaches  no  little 
interest.  I  owe  my  specimen  to  Mr.  John  Stewart  of 
Edinburgh,  who  latd  it  open  in  a  micaceous  red  sandstone 
in  the  quarry  of  Prestonhaugh,  near  Dunse,  where  it  is 
associated  with  some  of  the  better  known  ichthyic  organ- 
isms of  the  Upper  Old  Red  Sandstone,  such  as  Pterichthys 
major  and  TIoloptycMus  Nohilisslmus.  Existing  as  but  a 
deep  red  film  in  the  rock,  with  a  tolerably  well  defined 
outline,  but  without  trace  of  the  characteristic  venation  on 
which  the  fossil  botanist,  in  dealing  Avith  the  ferns,  founds 
his  generic  distinctions,  I  could  only  determine  that  it  was 
either  a  Cyclopterus  or  Neuropterus.  My  collection  Avas 
visited,  however,  by  the  late  lamented  Edward  Forbes,  only 

which  it  owes  its  preservation  was  deposited  around  it."  Mr.  Duncan, 
after  next  referring  to  the  remains  of  what  he  deems  a  land  plant,  derived 
from  the  same  deposit,  and  whicli,  thongli  sadly  mutilated,  presents  not 
a  little  of  the  appearance  of  the  naked  framework  of  a  frond  of  Cyclopterus 
Hibernicus  divested  of  the  leaflets,  goes  on  to  describe  the  apparent  cala- 
mitc  of  the  formation.  "  The  best  preserved  vegetable  remain  yet  found 
in  Dcnholm  Hill  quarry,"  he  says,  is  the  radical  portion  of  what  we  can- 
not hesitate  to  call  a  species  of  calamite.  The  lower  part  is  regularly  and 
beautifully  rounded,  bulging  and  prominent,  nearly  four  inches  in  diam- 
eter. About  an  inch  from  the  bottom  it  contracts  somewhat  suddenly  in 
two  separate  stages,  and  fronr  the  uppermost  sends  up  a  stem  about  an 
inch  in  diameter,  and  nearly  of  the  same  length,  where  it  is  broken  across. 
At  the  origin  of  this  stem  the  small  longitudinal  ridges  are  distinctly 
marked;  and  the  whole  outline  of  the  figure,  though  converted  into  stone, 
is  as  well  defined  as  it  could  have  been  in  the  living  plant."  Mr.  Duncan 
accompanies  his  description  with  a  figure  of  the  organism  described, 
which,  however,  rather  resembles  the  bulb  of  a  liliaceous  plant  than  the 
root  of  a  calamite,  which  in  all  the  better  preserved  specimens  contracts. 
Instead  of  expanding,  as  it  descends.  The  apparent  expansion,  however, 
in  the  Old  Red  specimen  may  be  simply  a  result  of  compression  in  its 
upper  part ;  the  under  part  certainly  much  resembles,  in  the  dome-like 
symmetry  of  its  outline,  the  radical  termination  of  a  solitary  calamite. 
39 


458 


ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 


a  few  weeks  before  his  death  ;  and  he  at  once  recognized  in 
my  Berwickshire  fern,  so  unequivocally  an  organism  of  the 
Upper    Old    Red,  the    Cydoiytenis  Hihernicus  of   those 


Y\a.   124. 


CTCLOPTERDS  HIBERNICU8. 


largely  developed  beds  of  yellow  sandstone  which  form  so 
marked  a  feature  in  the  geology  of  the  south  of  Ireland, 
and  whose  true  place,  whether  as  Upper  Old  Red  or  Lower 
Carboniferous,  has  been  the  subject  of  so  much  controversy. 
I  had  been  previously  introduced  by  Professor  Forbes,  in 
the  Musevnn  of  Economic  Geology  in  Jermyn  Street,  Lon- 
don, to  an  interesting  collection  of  plants  froiu.  these  yellow 


FOSSIL    I'LOKAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  459 

beds,  and  had  an  opportunity  aiForded  me  of  examining  the 
only  ichtliyic  organism  hitherto  found  associated  with 
them  ;  and  was  struck,  though  I  coiikl  not  identify  its 
species,  with  its  peculiarly  Old  Red  aspect ;  but  the  evi- 
dence of  the  Cyclopterus  is  of  course  more  conclusive  than 
that  of  the  fish ;  and  we  may,  I  think,  legitimately  con- 
clude, that  in  Irelanrl,  as  in  our  own  country,  it  was  a 
contemporary  of  the  great  Pterichthys  (P.  major),  —  the 
hugest,  and  at  least  one  of  the  last,  of  his  race,  —  and  gave 
its  rich  green  to  the  hill  sides  of  what  is  still  the  Emerald 
Island  during  the  latter  ages  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone, 
and  ere  the  Carboniferous  peiiod  had  yet  begun.  The 
Cyclopterus  Ilihernicus,  as  sliown  both  by  the  Preston- 
haugh  specimen  and  those  of  Ireland,  was  a  bipinnate  fern 
of  very  considerable  size, — probably  a  tree  fern.  Its 
pinn£B,  opposite  in  the  lower  part  of  the  frond,  are  alternate 
in  the  upper ;  while  its  leaflets,  which  are  of  a  sub-rhom- 
boidal  form,  and  so  closely  ranged  as  to  impmge  on  each 
other,  are  at  least  generally  alternate  in  their  arrangement 
throughout.  Among  living  plants  it  seems  most  nearly 
represented  by  a  South  American  species,  —  Dldymoclcena 
pulcherrima, — one  of  the  smaller  tree  ferns.  The  leaves 
of  this  graceful  species  are  bipinnate,  like  those  of  the  fossil ; 
and  the  pinnae  (thickly  set  with  simple,  alternately  arranged 
leaflets)  are  opposite  in  the  lower  part  of  the  frond,  and 
alternate  in  the  upper.  Widely  as  they  are  separated  in 
time,  the  recent  South  American  Dldymoclcena  and  the  Old 
Red  Sandstone  Cyclopterus,  that  passed  into  extinction 
ere  the  times  of  the  Coal,  might  be  ranged  togethei",  so  far 
at  least  as  appears  from  their  forms,  as  kindred  species.  It 
were  very  desirable  that  we  had  a  good  monograph  of  the 
Irish  Old  Red  j^lants,  the  contemporaries  of  the  latter,  as 
the  completest  and  best  preserved  representatives  of  the 
Middle  Palaeozoic  flora  yet  found.     Sir  Roderick  Murchison 


4G0  ONTHE    LESS    KNOWN 

has  figured  a  single  pinnae  of  this  Cycloptei-iis  in  his  recently 
published  "  Siluria  ; "  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  both  that  and 
one  of  its  contemporary  Lepidodendra,  in  the  last  edition 
of  his  "  Elements.  "  These  interesting  fragments,  however, 
serve  but  to  excite  our  curiosity  for  more.  When  urging 
Professor  Edward  Forbes  on  the  subject,  ere  parting  from 
him  for,  alas  !  what  proved  to  bo  the  last  time,  he  intimated 
an  intention  of  soon  taking  it  iip  ;  but  I  fear  his  purposed 
monograph  represents  only  one  of  many  works,  important 
to  science,  which  his  untimely  death  has  arrested  for  may- 
hap long  years  to  come. 

In  the  uppermost  beds  of  the  Upper  Old  Red  formation 
in  Scotland,  which  are  usually  of  a  pale  or  light  yellow 
color,  the  vegetable  remains  again  become  strongly  car- 
bonaceous, but  their  state  of  preservation  continues  bad, — ■ 
too  bad  to  admit  of  the  detennination  of  either  species  or 
genera ;  and  not  until  we  rise  a  very  little  beyond  the 
system  do  we  find  the  remains  of  a  flora  either  rich  or  well 
preserved.  But  very  remarkable  is  the  change  which  at 
this  stage  at  once  occurs.  We  pass  at  a  single  stride  from 
great  poverty  to  great  wealth.  The  suddenness  of  the 
change  seems  suited  to  remind  one  of  that  experienced  by 
the  voyager,  when, — after  traversing  for  many  days  some 
wide  expanse  of  ocean,  unvaried  save  by  its  banks  of 
floating  sea  weed,  or,  where  oc-casionally  and  at  mde 
intervals,  he  picks  up  some  leaf-bearing  bough,  or  marks 
some  fragment  of  drift  weed  go  floating  past, — he  enters 
at  length  the  sheltered  lagoon  of  some  coral  island,  and 
sees  all  around  the  deep  green  of  a  tropical  vegetation 
descending  in  tangled  luxuriance  to  the  water's  edge, — 
tall,  erect  ferns,  and  creeping  lycopodiaceae,  and  the  pan- 
danus,  with  its  atrial  roots  and  its  screw-like  clusters  of 
narrow  leaves,  and,  high  over  all,  tall  palms,  with  their 
huge    pinnate   fronds,     and    their    curiously    aggregated 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  4G1 

groups  of  massive  fruit.  And  yet  the  more  meagre  vege- 
tation of  the  earlier  time  is  not  witliout  its  special  interest. 
The  hmcl  j^lants  of  tlie  Old  Red  Sandstone  seem  to  com- 
pose, all  over  the  world,  the  most  ancient  of  the  terrestrial 
floras.  It  was  lield  only  a  few  years  ago,  that  the  Silurians 
of  the  United  States  had  their  plants  allied  to  the  Lei)ido- 
dendron.  But  the  group  in  which  these  occur  has  since 
been  transferred  from  the  Upper  Silurian  to  the  Old  Red 
System ;  and  we  find  it  expressly  stated  by  Professor  H. 
D.  Rogers,  in  his  valuable  contribution  to  the  "  Physical 
Atlas"  (second  edition,  1856),  that  "the  Cadent  [or  Lower 
Old  Red]  strata  are  the  oldest  American  formations  in 
which  remains  of  a  true  terrestrial  vegetation  have  yet 
been  discovered."  It  has  been  shown,  too,  by  Sir  Roderick 
Murchison,  that  the  supposed  Silurian  plants  of  Oporto  are 
in  reality  Carboniferous,  and  owe  their  apparent  position 
to  a  reverse  folding  of  the  strata.  I  have  already  referred 
to  the  solitary  sj^ore-cases  of  the  Ludlow  Rocks ;  and 
beneath  these  rocks,  says  Sir  Roderick  (1854),  "  no  remains 
of  plants  have  been  discovered  which  are  recognizably  of 
terrestrial  origin."  Scanty,  too,  as  the  terrestrial  flora  of 
the  Old  Red  Sandstone  everywhere  is,  Ave  find  it  exhibiting 
very  definitely  the  leading  Palaeozoic  features.  Its  pre- 
vailing plants  are  the  ferns  and  their  apparent  allies.  It 
has  in  our  own  country,  as  has  been  just  shown,  its  ferns, 
its  lepidodendra,  its  striated  jilants  allied  to  the  calamites, 
and  its  decided  araucanite ;  in  America,  in  the  Cadent 
series,  it  had  its  "  plants  allied  to  ferns  and  lepidodendra ; " 
and  in  the  Devonian  basin  of  Sabero  in  Spain,  its  charac- 
teristic organisms  are,  a  lepidodendron  (Z.  Chemxdigensis), 
and  a  very  peculiar  fern  {Splienopteris  laxus)*     But  while 

*  "  Though  the   coal    of  Sabero    is  apparently  iiichidcd  in  Devonian 
rocks,"  says  Sir  Roderick  Murchison,  "  M.  Casiano  de  Prado  thinks  that 
this  appearance  maybe  due  to  inverted  folds  of  the  strata."    On  the  other 
39* 


462  ON   THE   LESS   KNOWN,    ETC. 

in  its  main  features  it  resembled  the  succeeding  flora  of  the 
Carboniferous  period,  it  seems  in  all  its  forms  to  have  been 
specifically  distinct.  It  was  the  independent  flora  of  an 
earlier  creation  than  that  to  which  we  owe  the  coal.  For 
the  meagreness  of  the  paper  in  which  I  have  attempted  to 
describe  it  as  it  occurs  in  Scotland,  I  have  but  one  apology 
to  ofibr.  My  lecture  contains  but  little ;  but  then,  such  is 
the  scantiness  of  the  materials  on  which  I  had  to  work, 
that  it  could  not  have  contained  much  :  if,  according  to  the 
dramatist,  the  "amount  be  beggarly,"  it  is  because  the 
"  boxes  are  empty.  "  Partly,  apparently,  from  the  circum- 
stance that  the  organisms  of  this  flora  were  ill  suited  for 
preservation  in  the  rocks,  and  partly  because,  judging  from 
what  appears,  the  most  ancient  lands  of  the  globe  were 
widely  scattered  and  of  narrow  extent,  this  oldest  of  the 
floras  is  everywhere  the  most  meagre. 

hand,  M.  Alcide  D'Orbigny  regards  it  as  decidedly  Old  Red;  and  certainly 
its  Sphenopteris  and  Lcpidodendron  bear  much  more  the  aspect  of  Devo- 
nian than  of  Carboniferous  plants. 


LECTURE  TWELFTH. 

ON   THE  LESS  KNOWN   FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 

PART    II. 

In  the  noble  flora  of  the  Coal  Measures  much  still  re- 
mains to  be  done  in  Scotland.  Our  Lower  Carboniferous 
rocks  are  of  immense  development ;  the  Limestones  of 
Burdiehouse,  with  their  numerous  terrestrial  plants,  occur 
many  hundred  feet  beneath  our  Mountain  Limestones ; 
and  our  list  of  vegetable  species  peculiar  to  these  lower 
deposits  is  still  very  incomplete.  Even  in  those  higher 
Carboniferous  rocks  with  which  the  many  coal  workings  of 
the  country  have  rendered  us  comparatively  familiar,  there 
appears  to  be  still  a  good  deal  of  the  new  and  the  xmknown 
to  repay  the  labor  of  future  exploration.  It  was  only  last 
year  that  Mr.  Gourlay*  of  this  city  (Glasgow)  added  to 
our  fossil  flora  a  new  Volkmannia  from  the  coal  field  of 
Carluke  ;  and  I  detected  very  recently  in  a  neighboring 
locality  (the  Airdrie  coal  field),  though  in  but  an  indiflferent 
state  of  keeping,  what  seems  to  be  a  new  and  very  peculiar 
fern.     It  presents  at  first  sight  more  the  appearance  of  a 

*  Now,  alas!  no  more.  In  Mr.  Gourlay  the  energy  and  shrewd  busi- 
ness habits  of  the  accomplished  merchant  were  added  to  an  enlightened 
zeal  for  general  science,  and  no  inconsiderable  knowledge  in  both  the 
geologic  and  botanic  provinces.  The  marked  success,  in  several  respects, 
of  the  brilliant  meeting  of  the  British  Association  which  held  in  Glasgow 
III  September,  IS-'jS,  was  owing  in  no  small  measure  to  the  indefatigable 
exertions  and  well  calculated  arrangements  of  Mr.  Gourlay. 


464 


ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 


Cycadaceous  frond  than  any  other  vegetable  organism  of 
the  Carboniferous  age  which  I  have  yet  seen.  From  a 
mid  stem  there  proceed  at  right  angles,  and  in  alternate 

Fig.  125. 


order,  a  series  of  sessile,  lanceolate,  acute  leaflets,  nearly 
two  inches  in  length  by  about  an  eighth  part  of  an  inch  in 
breadth,  and  about  three  lines  apart.  Each  is  furnished 
with  a  slender  midrib  ;  and,  Avhat  seems  a  singular,  though 
not  entirely  unique,  feature  in  a  fern,  their  edges  are 
densely  hirsute,  and  bristle  with  thick,  short  hair,  nearly  as 
stiff  as  prickles.  The  venation  is  not  distinctly  preserved  ; 
but  enough  remains  to  show  that  it  must  have  been  pecu- 
liar,—  apparently  radiating  outwards  from  a  series  of 
centres  ranged  along  the  midrib.  Nay,  the  apparent  hairs 
seem  to  be  but  prolongations  of  the  nerves  carried  beyond 
the  edges  of  the  leaflets.  There  is  a  Stigmaria,  too,  on  the 
table,  very  ornate  in  its  sculpture,  of  which  I  have  now 
found  three  specimens  in  a  quai-ry  of  the  Lower  Coal  Meas- 
ures  near    Portobello,   that    has   still  to  be  figured   aijd 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND. 


465 


described.      In    this    richly    ornamented    Stigmaria    the 
Fig.  126.  characteristic  areolse  present  tlie  ordi- 

nary asj^ect.  Each,  however,  forms  the 
centre  of  a  sculptured  star,  consisting 
of  from  eighteen  to  tAventy  rays,  or 
rather  the  centre  of  a  sculptured  flower 
of  the  composite  order,  resembling  a 
meadow  daisy  or  sea-aster.  The  mi- 
nute petals, —  if  we  are  to  accept  the 
latter  comparison, —  are  of  an  irregu- 
larly lenticular  form,  generally  entire, 
but  in  some  instances  ranged  in  two,  or 
even  three,  concentric  lines  round  the 
depressed  centre  of  the  areolae  ;  while 
the  interspaces  outside  are  occupied  by 
numerous  fretted  markings,  resembling 
broken  fragments  of  petals,  Avhich, 
though  less  regularly  ranged  than  the 
others,  are  effective  in  imparting  a 
richly  ornate  aspect  to  the  whole. 
Ever   since  the  appearance,  in   1846,   of   Mr.   Binney's 

■paper  on  the  relations  of  stigmaria  to  sigillaria  as  roots 

and  stems,  I  have  been  looking 

for   distinguishing   specific  marks 

among   the  former ;    and,  foiling 

for  a  time  to  find  any,  I  concluded 

that,   though    the    stems   of   the 

sigillarian    genus  were   variously 

sculptured,  their  roots  might  in  all 

the  species  have  been  the  same. 

The  present   rich   specimen  does 

seem,  however,  to  bear  the  specific 

stamp ;    and,   from    the    peculiar 

character  of  the  termination  of  another  specimen  on  the 


STIGMARIA. 


Fig.  127. 


«-? 


THE    SAME,    MAGNIFIED 


466 


ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 


Fig.  128 


table,  I  am  inclined  to  hold  that  the  stigmaria  may  have 
borne  the  appearance  rather  of  underground  stems  than  of 
proper  roots.       This  specimen  suddenly  tei'ininates,  at  a 

thickness  of  two  and  a  half  inches,  in 
a  rounded  point,  abrupt  as  that  of  one 
of  the  massier  cacti ;  and  every  part 
of  the  blunt  sudden  termination  is 
thickly  fi'etted  over  with  the  charac- 
teristic areolae.  The  slim  tubular 
rootlets  must  have  stuck  out  on  every 
side  from  the  obtuse  rounded  termi- 
nation of  this  underground  stem,  as 
we  see,  on  a  small  scale,  the  leaflets 
of  our  larger  club  mosses  sticking  out 
^A  from  what  are  comparatively  the 
"  scarce  less  abrupt  terminations  of 
their  creeping  stems  and  branches. 
In  at  least  certain  stages  of  growth 
the  sub-aerial  stems  of  Lepidodendron 
also  terminated  abruptly  (see  Fig.  24) ;  and  the  only  termi- 
nal point  of  Ulodendrou  I  ever  saw  was  nearly  as  obtuse  as 
that  of  Stigmaria. 

I  have  been  long  desirous  of  acquainting  myself  with  the 
true  character  of  this  latter  plant  (Ulodendron),  but 
hitherto  my  labors  have  not  been  very  successful.  A  speci- 
men of  Ulodendron  minus,  however,  now  on  the  table, 
which  I  disinterred  several  years  ago  from  out  a  bed  of 
ferru<^inous  shale  in  the  Water  of  Leith,  a  little  above 
the  village  of  Colinton,  exhibits  several  peculiarities  which, 
so  for  as  I  know,  have  not  yet  been  described.  Though 
rather  less  than  ten  inches  in  length  by  about  three  inches 
in  breadth,  it  exhibits  no  fewer  than  seven  of  those  round, 
beautifully  sculptured  scars,  ranged  rectilinearly  along  the 
trunk,  by  which  this  ancient  genus  is  so  remarkably  charac- 


STIGMARIA. 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  467 

terized.  It  is  covered  with  small,  sliar[)ly  relieved,  obovate 
scales,  most  of  them  furnished  with  an  apparent  midrib, 
and  with  their  edges  slightly  turned  up ;  from  which 
peculiarities,  and  their  great  beauty,  they  seem  suited  to 
remind  the  architect  of  that  style  of  sculpture  adopted  by 
Palladio  from  his  master  Vitruvius,  when,  in  ornamenting 
the  Corinthian  and  composite  torus,  he  fretted  it  into 
closely  imbricated  obovate  leaves.  These  scales  are  ranged 
inelegant  curves,  not  unlike  those  ornamental  curves,  —  a 
feat  of  the  turning-lathe, —  which  one  sees  roughening  the 
backs  of  ladies'  watches  of  French  manufacture.  My  fossil 
exhibited,  as  it  lay  in  the  rock,  what  I  never  saw  in  any 
other  specimen,  —  a  true  branch  sticking  out  at  an  acute 
angle  from  the  stem,  and  fretted  with  scales  of  a  peculiar 
form,  which  in  one  little  corner  appear  also  on  the  main 
stem,  but  which  differ  so  considerably  from  those  of  the 
obovate,  apparently  imbricated  type,  that,  if  found  on  a 
separate  sjiecimen,  they  might  be  held  to  indicate  difference 
of  species.  It  has  been  shown  by  M.'ssrs.  Lindley  and 
Hutton,  on  the  evidence  of  one  of  the  specimens  figured 
in  the  "  Fossil  Flora,"  that  the  line  of  circular  scars  so 
remarkable  in  this  genus,  and  which  is  held  to  be  the 
impressions  made  by  a  rectilinear  range  of  almost  sessile 
cones,  existed  in  duplicate  on  each  stem,  —  a  row  occurring 
on  two  of  the  sides  of  the  plant  directly  opoosite  each 
other.  The  branch  in  my  specimen  struck  off  from  one  of 
the  intermediate  sides  at  right  angles  with  the  cones.  We 
already  know  that  these  were  ranged  in  one  plane  ;  nor,  if 
the  branches  were  ranged  in  one  plane  also, —  certainly  the 
disposition  of  branch  which  M'ould  consort  best  with  such  a 
disposition  of  cone,  —  would  the  arrangement  be  without 
example  in  the  A'egetable  kingdom  as  it  even  now  exists. 
"  Our  host,"  says  the  late  Captain  Basil  Ilall,  in  his  brief 
description  of  the  island  of  Ja\'a,  "  carried  us  to  see  a 


468  ONTHELESSKNOWN 

singular  tree,  which  had  been  brought  from  Madagascar, 
called  familiarly  the  Traveller's  Friend,  Urania  being,  I 
believe,  its  botanic  name.  We  found  it  to  differ  from  most 
other  trees  in  having  all  its  branches  in  one  plane,  like  the 
sticks  of  a  fan  or  the  feathers  of  a  peacock's  tail."  I  may 
further  mention,  that  the  specimen  which  showed  me  the 
abrupt  cactus-like  terminations  of  Ulodendron  repeated  the 
evidence  of  Messrs.  Lindley  and  Button's  specimen  regard- 
ing the  arrangement  of  the  cone  scars  on  opposite  sides, 
and  showed  also  that  these  scars  ascended  to  within  little 
more  than  an  inch  of  the  top  of  the  plant. 

As  there  are  cases  in  which  the  position  of  a  fossil  plant 
may  add,  from  its  bearing  on  geologic  history,  a  threefold 
interest  to  the  fossil  itself,  regarded  simply  as  an  organism, 
I  may  be  permitted  to  refer  to  a  circumstance  already  re- 
corded, that  there  was  a  Avell  marked  Bechera  detected 
about  two  years  ago  by  Dr.  Macbean  of  Edinburgh,  an 
accomplished  naturalist  and  careful  observer,  in  a  thin 
argillaceous  stratum,  interposed,  in  the  Queen's  Park, 
between  a  bed  of  columnar  basalt  and  a  bed  of  trap-tuff,  in 
the  side  of  the  eminence  occupied  atop  by  the  ruins  of  St. 
Anthony's  Chapel.  The  stratified  bed  in  Avhich  it  occurs 
seems,  from  its  texture  and  color,  to  be  composed  mainly 
of  trappean  materials,  but  deposited  and  arranged  in 
water ;  and  abounds  in  carbonaceous  markings,  usually  in 
so  imperfect  a  state  of  keeping  that,  though  long  known  to 
some  of  the  Edinburgh  geologists,  not  a  single  species,  or 
even  genus,  Avere  they  able  to  determine.  All  that  could 
be  said  was,  that  they  seemed  fucoidal,  and  might  of  course 
belong  to  any  age.  The  Bechera,  however,  shows  that  the 
deposit  is  one  of  the  Lower  Coal  Measures.  There  was 
found  associated  with  it  a  tooth  of  a  Carboniferous  Holop- 
tychius,  Avhose  evidence  bore  out  the  same  conclusion  ;  and 
both  fossils  derive  an  importance  from  the  light  Avhich  they 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF   SCOTLAND.  469 

throw  on  the  age  of  the  bed  of  tuiF  Avhich  underlies  the 
stratum  in  which  they  occur.  At  least  this  trap-rock  must 
be  as  old  as  the  fossiliferous  layer  Avhich  rests  upon  it,  or 
rather,  as  shown  by  its  underlying  position,  a  little  older : 
it  must  be  a  trap  of  the  earlier  Carboniferous  period.  Fur- 
ther, it  must  have  been,  not  injected  among  the  strata,  but 
poured  out  over  the  surface,  —  in  all  probability  covered  at 
the  time  by  water ;  and  there  must  have  formed  over  it, 
ere  another  overflow  of  trap  took  place,  a  thin  sedimentary 
bed  charged  with  fragments  of  the  plants  of  the  period, 
and  visited,  when  in  the  course  of  deposition,  by  some  of 
its  fishes. 

Even  among  the  vegetable  organisms  of  our  Coal  Meas- 
ures, already  partially  described  and  figured,  much  remains 
to  be  accomplished  in  the  way  of  restoration.  Portions  of 
Sphenopteris  bifida^  for  instance,  a  fern  of  the  Lower  Car- 
boniferous rocks  have  been  repeatedly  figured  ;  but  a  beau- 
tiful specimen  on  the  table,  which  exhibits  what  seems  to 
be  the  complete  frond  of  the  plant,  will  give,  I  doubt  not, 
fresh  ideas  respecting  the  general  framework,  if  I  may  so 
speak,  of  this  skeleton  fern,  to  even  those  best  acquainted 
with  the  figures ;  and  an  elaborate  restoration  of  its  con- 
temporary, Sphenopteris  affinis  (see  frontisjiiece)  which  I 
completed  from  a  fine  series  of  specimens  in  my  collection, 
will  be  new,  as  a  whole,  to  those  most  familiar  with  this 
commonest  of  the  Burdiehouse  fossils.  From  comparisons 
instituted  between  minute  portions  of  this  Sphenopteris  and 
a  recent  fern,  it  has  been  held  considerably  to  resemble  a 
Davallia  of  the  West  Indies ;  Avhereas  it  will  be  seen  from 
the  entire  frond  that  it  was  characterized  by  very  striking 
peculiarities,  exemplified,  say  some  of  our  higher  botanical 
authorities,  to  whom  I  have  submitted  my  restoration,  by 
no  fern  that  now  lives.  The  frond  of  Davallia  Ccmarien- 
sis,  though  unlike  in  its  venation,  greatly  resembles  in  gen- 
40 


\ 


470 


ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 


eral  outline  one  of  the  larger  pinnae  of  Sphenopteris  affinis; 
but  these  pinnse  form  only  a  small  part  of  the  entire  frond 

Fig.  129. 


SPHENOPTERIS    BIFIDA. 

{Burdiehouse.) 

of  this  Sphenopteris.  It  was  furnished  with  a  stout  leafless 
rachis,  or  leaf-stalk,  exceedingly  similar  in  form  to  that  of 
our  common  brake  [Pteris  aquilina).  So  completely,  in- 
deed, did  it  exhibit  the  same  club-like,  slightly  bent  termi- 
nation,  the  same  gradual  diminution  in  thickness,  and  the 
same  smooth  surface,  that  one  accustomed  to  see  this  part 
of  the  bracken  used  as  a  thatch  can  scarce  doubt  that 
the  stipes  of  Sphenoptei-is  would  have  served  the  purpose 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  471 

equally  well ;  nay,  that  M'ere  it  still  in  existence  to  be  so 
employed,  a  roof  thatched  with  it,  on  Avhich  the  pinnae  and 
leaflets  were  concealed,  and  only  the  club-like  stems  ex- 
posed, row  above  row,  in  the  style  of  the  fern-thatcher, 
could  not  be  distinguished,  so  far  as  form  and  size  went, 
from  a  roof  thatched  with  brake.  High  above  the  club- 
like termination  of  the  rachis  the  stem  divided  into  tAVO 
parts,  each  of  a\  hich,  a  little  liigher  up,  also  divided  into 
two ;  these  in  turn,  in  at  least  the  larger  fronds,  also  bifur- 
cated ;  and  this  law  of  bifurcation,  —  a  marked,  mayhap 
unique,  peculiarity  in  a  fern,  —  regulated  all  the  larger 
divisions  of  the  frond,  though  its  smaller  pinnae  and  leaf- 
lets were  alternate.  It  was  a  further  peculiarity  of  the 
plant  that,  unlike  the  brake,  it  threw  off,  ere  the  main 
divisions  of  its  rachis  took  place,  two  pinnje  placed  in  the 
alternate  order,  and  of  comparatively  small  size.  The 
frond  of  Sphenopteris  bifida  was  of  a  more  simple  form 
than  that  of  its  larger  congener,  and  not  a  little  resembled 
a  living  fern  of  New  Zealand,  Coenojyteris  vivipara.  It 
was  trii^innate ;  its  secondary  stems  were  j^laced  directly 
opposite  on  the  midrib,  but  its  tertiary  ones  in  the  alter- 
nate arrangement ;  and  its  leaflets  which  were  also  alter- 
nate, were  as  rectilinear  and  slim  as  mere  veins,  or  as  the 
thread-like  leaflets  of  asparagus.  Like  the  fronds  of  Coe- 
nopteris  when  not  in  seed,  it  must  have  presented  the 
appearance  of  the  mere  macerated  framework  of  a  fern. 
I  need  scarce  remark  that,  independently  of  the  scientific 
interest  Avhich  must  attach  to  restorations  of  these  early 
plants,  they  speak  powerfully  to  the  imagination,  and  sup- 
ply it  with  materials  from  Avhich  to  construct  the  vanished 
landscaj^es  of  the  Carboniferous  ages.  From  one  such  re- 
stored fern  as  the  two  now  submitted  to  tlie  Association, 
it  is  not  difficult  to  pass  in  fancy  to  the  dank  slopes  of 
the  ancient  land  of  the  Lower  Coal  Measures,  when  they 


472  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

waved  as  thickly  with  graceful  Sphenopteres  as  our  exist- 
ing hill  sides  with  the  common  brake ;  and  when  every 
breeze  that  rustled  through  the  old  forests  bent  in  mimic 
waves  their  slim  flexible  stems  and  light  and  graceful 
foliage. 

In  1844,  when  Professor  Nicol,  of  Marischal  College, 
Aberdeen,  appended  to  his  interesting  "  Guide  to  the  Ge- 
ology of  Scotland,"  a  list  of  the  Scottish  fossils  known  at 
the  time,  he  enumerated  only  two  vegetable  species  of  the 
Scotch  Oolitic  system,  —  Equisetum  columnare  and  Pi7i- 
ites  or  Pence  Elggensis;  the  former  one  of  the  early 
discoveries  of  our  distinguished  President,  Sir  Roderick 
Murchison ;  the  latter,  of  the  late  Mr.  William  Nicol  of 
Edinburgh.  Chiefly  from  researches  in  the  Lias  of  Eathie, 
near  Cromarty,  and  in  the  Oolites  of  Sutherland  and  the 
Hebrides,  I  have  been  enabled  to  increase  the  list  from 
two  to  rather  more  than  fifty  species,  —  not  a  great  num- 
ber, certainly,  regarded  as  the  sole  representative  of  a 
flora ;  and  yet  it  may  be  deemed  comparatively  not  a  very 
small  one  by  such  as  may  remember,  that  in  1837,  when 
Dr.  Buckland  j^ublished  the  second  edition  of  his  "  Bridge- 
water  Treatise,"  Adolphe  Brogniart  had  enumerated  only 
seventy  species  of  plants  as  occurring  in  all  the  Secondary 
formations  of  Europe,  from  the  Chalk  to  the  Trias  inclu- 
sive. In  a  paper  such  as  the  present  I  can  of  course  do 
little  more  than  just  indicate  a  few  of  the  more  striking 
features  of  the  Scottish  flora  of  the  middle  Secondary 
ages.  Like  that  of  the  period  of  the  true  Coal,  it  liad 
its  numerous  coniferous  trees.  As  shown  by  the  fossil 
woods  of  Helmsdale  and  Eigg,  old  Oolitic  Scotland,  like 
the  Scotland  of  three  centuries  ago,  musfr  have  had  its 
mighty  forests  of  pine;*    and  in  one  res2oect  these  ti-ees 

*  Trees  must  liave  been  very  abundant  in  what  is  now  Scotland  in  these 
Secondary  ages.    Trunks  of  the  common  Scotch  fir  are  of  scarce  more 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  473 

seem  to  have  more  nearly  resembled  those  of  the  recent 
pine  forests  of  our  country  than  the  trees  of  the  coniferous 
forests  of  the  remote  Carboniferous  era.  For  while  we 
scarce  ever  find  a  cone  associated  with  the  coniferous 
woods  of  the  Coal  Measures,  —  Lindley  and  Ilutton  never 
saw  but  one  from  all  the  English  coal  fields,  and  Mr,  Alex- 
ander Bryson  of  Edinburgh,  only  one  from  all  the  coal 
fields  of  Scotland,  —  tree-cones  of  at  least  four  different 
species,  more  probably  of  five,  are  not  rare  in  our  Scottish 
deposits  of  the  Lias  and  Oolite.  It  seems  not  improbable 
that  in  the  Carboniferous  genei-a  Pinites,  Pitus,  and  Ana- 
bathra,  which  approach  but  remotely  to  aught  that  now 
exists,  the  place  of  the  ligneous  scaly  cone  may  have  been 
taken,  as  in  the  junipers  and  the  yews,  by  a  perishable 
berry ;  while  the  Pines  and  Araucarians  of  the  Oolite 
were,  like  their  congeners  in  recent  times,  in  reality  conif- 
erous, that  is,  cone-bearing  trees.  It  is  another  character- 
istic of  these  Secondary  conifers,  that  whUe  the  woods  of 

freqaent  occurrence  in  our  mosses  than  the  trunks  of  somewhat  resembling 
trees  among  the  sliales  of  the  Lower  Oolite  of  Helmsdale,  On  examining 
in  that  neighborhood,  about  ten  years  since,  a  huge  heap  of  materials 
which  had  been  collected  along  the  sea  shore  for  burning  into  lime  in  a 
temporary  kiln,  I  found  that  more  tlian  three  fourths  of  the  'yhole  con- 
sisted of  fragments  of  coniferous  wood  washed  out  of  the  sh  ile  beds  by 
tlie  surf,  and  the  remainder  of  a  massive  Isastrea.  And  oriy  two  years 
ago,  after  many  kilnfuls  had  been  gathered  and  burnt,  his  g^.-ace  the  Duke 
of  Argyll  found  that  fossil  wood  could  still  be  collected  by  raitloads  along 
the  shore  of  Helmsdale.  The  same  woods  also  occur  at  Port  Gower,  Kin- 
tradwell,  Shandwick,  and  Eathie.  In  the  Island  of  Eigg,  too,  in  an  Oolite 
deposit,  locked  up  in  trap,  and  whose  stratigraphical  relations  cannot  in 
consequence  be  exactly  traced,  great  fragments  of  Pinites  Eiggensis  are 
so  abundant,  that,  armed  with  a  mattock,  I  have  dug  out  of  the  rock,  in 
a  few  minutes,  specimens  enough  to  supply  a  dozen  of  museums.  In 
short,  judging  from  its  fossiliferaus  remains,  it  seems  not  improbable  that 
old  Oolitic  Scotland  was  as  densely  covered  with  coniferous  trees  as  the 
Scotland  of  Roman  times,  when  the  great  Caledonian  forest  stretched 
northwards  from  the  wall  of  Antoninus  to  the  furthest  Thule. 

40* 


474  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

the  Pnlteozoic  periods  exhibit  often,  like  those  of  the  troi> 
ics,  none  of  the  dense  concentric  hnes  of  annual  growth 
ivhich  mark  the  reign  of  winter,  these  annual  lines  are 
scarce  less  strongly  impressed  on  the  Oolitic  woods  than 
on  those  of  Norway  or  of  our  own  country  in  the  present 
day.  In  some  of  the  fossil  trees  these  yearly  rings  are  of 
great  breadth ;  they  seem  to  have  sprung  up  in  the  rich 
soil  of  sheltered  hollows  and  plains,  and  to  have  increased 
in  diameter  from  half  an  inch  to  three  quarters  of  an  inch 
yearly ;  while  in  other  trees  of  the  same  sj)ecies  the  yearly 
zones  of  growth  are  singularly  narroAv, — in  some  instances 
little  more  than  half  a  line  in  thickness.  Rooted  on  some 
exposed  hill  side,  in  a  shallow  and  meagre  soil,  they  in- 
creased their  diameter  durini;  the  twelvemonth  little  more 
than  a  line  in  the  severer  seasons,  and  little  more  than 
an  eighth  part  of  an  inch  even  when  the  seasons  were 
most  favorable.  Further,  Avhether  the  rings  be  large  or 
small,  we  ordinarily  find  them  occurring  in  the  same  speci- 
mens in  groups  of  larger  and  smaller.  In  one  of  my 
Helmsdale  specimens,  indicative  generally  of  rapid  growth, 
there  are  four  contiguous  annual  rings,  which  measure  in 
all  an  inch  and  two  twelfths  across,  Avhile  the  fom-  con- 
tiguous rings  immediately  beside  them  measure  only  half 
an  inch.  "If,  at  the  present  day,"  says  a  distinguished 
fossil  botanist,  "  a  warm  and  moist  summer  produces  a 
broader  annual  layer  than  a  cold  and  dry  one,  and  if  fos- 
sil plants  exhibit  such  appearances  as  Ave  refer  in  recent 
plants  to  a  diversity  of  summers,  then  it  is  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  a  similar  diversity  formerly  prevailed."  The 
same  reasoning  is  of  course  as  applicable  to  (jroxips  of  an- 
nual layers  as  to  single  annual  layers ;  and  may  Ave  not  A-en- 
ture  to  infer  from  the  almost  invariable  occurrence  of  such 
groups  in  the  woods  of  this  ancient  system,  that  that  ill- 
nnderstood  law  of  the  Aveather  which  gives  us  in  irregU' 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


475 


lar  succession  groups  of  colder  and  Avarmer  seasons,  and 
whose  operation,  as  Bacon  tells  us,  was  first  remarked  in 
the  provinces  of  the  Netherlands,  was  as  certainly  in  ex- 
istence during  the  ages  of  the  Oolite  as  at  the  present 
time  ? 

Twio;s  which  exhibit  the  foliage  of  these  ancient  conifers 
seem  to  be  less  rare  in  our  Scotch  deposits  than  in  those  of 

Fig.  130. 


CONIFEBS? 


England  of  the  same  age.      My  collection  contains  fossil 
sprigs,  with  the  slim  needle-like  leaves  attached,  of  what 


476 


ON    THE    LESS    KNOWK 


seem  to  be  from  six  to  seven  different  species ;  and  it  is 
worthy  of  notice,  that  they  resemble  in  the  group  rather 
the  coniferjB  of  the  southern  than  those  of  the  northern 
hemisphere.  One  sprig  in  my  collection  seems  scarcely 
distinguishable  from  that  of  the  recent  Altinga  excelsaj 
another,  from  that  of  the  recent  Altinga  Cunninghami. 
Lindley  and  Hutton  figure  in  their  fossil  flora  a  minute 
branch  of  Dacrydiutn  ciqyressinum^  in  order  to  show  how 
nearly  the  twigs  of  a  large  tree,  from  fifty  to  a  hundi'ed 
feet  high,  may  resemble  some  of  the  "  fossils  referable  to 
Lycopodiaceoe."     More  than  one  of  the  Oolitic  tAvigs  in  my 

Fig.  131. 


CONIFER  TWIGS. 


collection  are  of  a  resembling  character,  and  may  have 
belonged  either  to  cone-bearing  trees  or  to  club  mosses. 
Respecting,  however,  the  real  character  of  at  least  one  of 
the  specimens, —  a  minute  branch  from  the  Lias  of  Eathie, 
Avith  the  leaflets  attached, — there  can  be  no  mistake.  The 
thicker  part  of  the  stem  is  in  such  a  state  of  keeping,  that 
it  presents  to  the  microscope,  in  a  sliced  preparation,  the 
internal    structure,  and    exhibits,  as  in  recent  coniferous 


FOSSIL    FLO U AS    OF    SCOTLAND.  477 

twigs  of  a  year's  growth,  a  central  pith,  a  single  ring  of 
reticulated  tissue  arranged  in  lines  that  radiate  outwards, 
and  a  thin  layer  of  enveloping  bark.  Nothing,  then,  can 
be  more  certain  than  that  this  ancient  twig,  which  must  be 
accepted  as  i-epresentative  of  the  foliage  of  whole  forests  of 
the  Secondary  ages  in  Scotland,  formed  part  of  a  conifer  of 
the  Lias  ;  and  the  foliage  of  several  of  the  other  twigs,  its 
contemporaries,  though  I  have  failed  to  demonstrate  their 
true  character  in  the  same  way,  bear  a  scarce  less  coniferous 
aspect.  The  cones  of  the  period,  from  the  circumstance 
that  they  are  locked  up  in  a  hard  limestone  that  clings 
closely  around  their  scales,  and  from  the  further  circum- 
stance that  the  semi-calcareous  lignite  into  which  they  are 
resolved  is  softer  and  less  tenacious  than  the  enclosing 
matrix,  present,  when  laid  open,  not  their  outer  surfaces, 
but  mere  sections  of  their  interior ;  and  give,  in  conse- 
quence, save  in  their  general  proportions  and  outline,  but 
few  specific  marks  by  which  to  distinguish  them.  We  see, 
however,  in  some  cases  in  these  sections  what  would  be 
otherwise  imseen,  —  the  flat  naked  seeds  lying  embedded  in 
their  hollow  receptacles  between  the  scales,  and  in  as  per- 
fect a  state  of  keeping  as  the  seeds  of  recent  pines  that  had 
ripened  only  a  twelvemonth  ago.  Had  not  the  vitality  of 
seeds  its  limits  in  time,  like  life  of  all  other  kinds,  one 
might  commit  these  perfect  fossil  germs  to  the  soil,  in  the 
hope  of  seeing  the  old  extinct  forests  called,  through  their 
agency,  a  second  time  into  existence.  Of  three  apjiarent 
species  of  cones  which  occur  in  the  Eathie  Lias,  the  smallest 
seems  to  have  resembled  in  size  and  appearance  that  of  the 
Scotch  fir ;  the  largest,  which  consisted  from  bottom  to 
top,  as  seen  in  section,  of  from  nine  to  ten  scales,  appears  to 
have  been  more  in  the  proportions  of  the  oblong  oval  cones 
of  the  spruce  family  ;  while  a  cone  of  intermediate  length, 
but  of  considerably  greater  breadth,  assumed  the  rounded 


478 


ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 


^i?-i32.  fonn  of  tlie  cones  of  the  cedar. 

I  have  found  in  the  same  deposit 
what  seems  to  be  the  sprig  of 
a  conifer,  Avith  four  apparently 
embryo  cones  attached  to  it  in 
the  alternate  order.  These  are 
rather  more  sessile  than  the  young 
cones  of  the  larch  ;  but  the  aspect 
of  the  whole  is  that  of  a  larch 
twig  in  early  summer,  when  the 
minute  and  tender  cones,  pos- 
sessed of  all  the  beauty  of  flow- 
ers, first  appear  along  its  sides. 
Among  conifers  of  the  Pine  and  Araucarian  type  we 
mark  the  first  appearance  in  this  system,  in  at  least  Scot- 
land, of  the  genus  Thuja.  One  of  the  Helmsdale  plants 
of  this  genus  closely  resembles  the  common  Arbor  VitaB 
( Thuja  occidentalis)  of  our  gardens  and  shrubberies.  It 
exhibits  the  same  numerous  slim,  thick-clustered  branch- 
lets,  covered  over  by  the  same  miniite,  sessile,  scale-like 
leaves;  and  so  entirely  reminds  one  of  the  recent  Thuja, 
that  it  seems  difficult  to  conceive  of  it  as  the  member  of  a 
flora  so  ancient  as  that  of  the  Oolite.  But  not  a  few  of 
the  Oolitic  plants  in  Scotland  boar  this  modern  aspect. 
The  great  development  of  its  Cycadaceje,  —  an  order  un- 
known in  our  Coal  Measures,  —  also  forms  a  prominent 
feature  of  the  Oolitic  flora.  One  of  the  first  known  genera 
of  this  curious  order, — the  genus  Pterophyllum, —  appears 
in  the  Trias.  It  distinctively  marks  the  commencement  of 
the  Secondary  flora,  and  intimates  that  the  once  great  Pa- 
laeozoic flora,  after  gradually  Avaning  throughout  the  Per- 
mian ages,  and  becoming  extinct  at  their  close,  had  been 
succeeded  by  a  vegetation  altogether  new.  At  least  one 
of  the  Helmsdale  forms  of  this  familv  is  identical  with  a 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND, 


479 


Yorkishire  species  already  named  and  figured, — Zamia  pec- 
tinata :  a  well  marked  Zamia  which  occurs  in  the  Lias  of 
Eathie  appears  to  be  new.  Its  pinnate  leaves  were  fur- 
nished with  a  strong  woody  midrib,  so  well  preserved  in 
the  rock,  that  it  yields  its  internal  structure  to  the  micro- 
Fig.  133. 


ZAMIA. 


scope.  The  ribbon-like  pinnoe  or  leaflets  were  rectilinear, 
retaining  their  full  breadth  until  they  united  to  the  stem 
at  right  angles,  but  set  somewhat  awry  j  and,  like  several 


480 


ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 


of  the  recent  Zamiae,  they  were  striped  longitudinally  with 

Fig.  134. 


ZAMIA. 


cord-like  lines.  (Fig.  133.)  Even  the  mode  of  decay  of 
this  Zamia,  as  shown  by  the  abrupt  termination  of  its  leaf- 
lets, exactly  resembled  that  of  its  existing  congeners.  (Fig. 
134.)  The  withered  points  of  the  pinnae  of  recent  Zaraise 
drop  oif  as  if  clipped  across  with  a  pair  of  scissors ;  and  in 
fossil  fronds  of  this  Zamia  of  the  Lias  we  find  exactly  the 
same  clipped-like  appearance.  (Fig.  135.)  Another  Scotch 
Zamia  (Fig.  136),  which  occurs  m  the  Lower  Oolite  of 
Helmsdale,  resembles  the  Eathie  one  in  the  breadth  of  its 
leaflets,  but  they  are  not  wholly  so  rectilinear,  diminishing 
slightly  towards  their  base  of  attachment ;  they  are  ranged, 
too,  along  the  stem  or  midrib,  not  at  a  riglit  angle,  but  at 
an  acute  one ;  the  line  of  attachment  is  not  set  awry,  but 
on  the  general  plane  of  the  leaf;  and  the  midrib  itself  is 
considerably  less  massive  and  round.  A  third  species  from 
the  same  locality  bears  a  general  resemblance  to  the  latter ; 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


481 


but  the  leaflets  are  narrower  at  the  base,  and,  as  the  prmt 

Fig.  135. 


indicates  (Fig.  136),  so  differently  attached  to  the  stem,  that 

Fig.  136 


from  the  pressure  in  the  rock  most  of  them  have  become 
41 


482 


ON   THE   LESS   KNOWN 


detached;  while  yet  a  fom-th  species  (Fig,  137),  very  closely 
resembles  a  Zaraia  of  the  Scarborough  Oolite,  —  Z.  lanceo- 
lata.     The  leaflets,  however,  contract  much  more  suddenly 

Fig.  137. 


from  their  greatest  breadth  than  those  of  lanceolata^  into 
a  pseudo-footstalk ;  and  the  contraction  takes  place  not 
almost  equally  on  both  sides,  as  in  that  species,  but  almost 
exclusively  on  the  upper  side.  And  so,  provisionally  at 
least,  this  Helmsdale  Zamia  may  be  regarded  as  specifically 
new. 
With  the  leaves  of  the  Eathie  Zaraia,  we  find,  in  this 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


483 


northern  outlier  of  the  Lias,  cones  of  a  peculiar  form, 
which,  like  the  leases  themselves,  are  still  unfigured  and 
undescribed,  and   some  of  which  could   scarce   have   be- 


CONB. 


longed  to  any  coniferous  tree.  In  one  of  these  (Fig.  138), 
the  ligneous  bracts  or  scales,  narrow  and  long,  and  gi-ad- 
ually  tapering  till  they  assume  nearly  the  awl-shaped  form, 
cluster  out  thick  from  the  base  and  middle  portions  of  the 
cone,  and,  like  the  involucral  appendages  of  t]]e  hazel-nut, 
or  the  sepals  of  the  yet  unfolded  rose-bud,  sweep  gracefully 
upwards  to  the  top,  Avhere  they  present  at  their  margins 
miniite  denticulations.  In  another  species  the  bracts  are 
broader,  thinner,  and  more  leaf-Ukc  :  they  rise,  too,  more 
from  the  base  of  the  cone,  and  less  from  its  middle  por- 
tions ;  so  that  tlie  whole  must  have  resembled  an  enormous 
bud,  with  strong  woody  scales,  some  of  which  extended 


484 


ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 


from  base  to  apex.  The  first  described  of  these  two  spe- 
cies seems  to  have  been  more  decidedly  a  cotie  than  the 
other ;  but  it  is  probable  that  they  were  both  connecting 


Fig.  139. 


links  between  such  leathern  seed-bearing  flowers  as  we  find 
developed  in  Cycas  revoluta^  and  such  seed-bearing  cones 
as  we  find  exemplified  in  Zamia  pungens.  The  bud-like 
cone,  however,  does  not  seem  to  have  been  that  of  a  Cyca- 
daceous  plant,  as  it  occupied  evidently  not  a  terminal  posi- 
tion on  the  plant  that  bore  it,  like  the  cones  of  Zamia  or 
the  flowers  of  Cycas,  but  a  lateral  one,  like  the  lateral 
flowers  of  some  of  the  Cactus  tribe.  Another  class  of 
veo-etable  forms,  of  occasional  occurrence  in  the  Helmsdale 
beds,  seems  intermediate  between  the  Cycadaceae  and  the 
ferns :  at  least,  so  near  is  the  approach  to  the  ordinary 
fern  outline,  while  retaining  the  stiff*  ligneous  character  of 
Zamia,  that  it  is  scarce  less  difficult  to  determine  to  which 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


485 


of  the  two  orders  of  j^lants  such  organisms  belonged,  than 
to  decide  whether  some  of  tlio  sUni  graceful  sprigs  of 
foliage  that  occur  iu  the  rocks  beside  them  belonged  to 
the  conifers  or  the  club  mosses 
And  I  am  informed  by  Sir 
Charles  Lyell,  that  (as  some  of 
the  existing  conifers  bear  a  foli- 
age scarce  distinguishable  from 
that  of  Lycopodiacea;),  so  a  re- 
cently discovered  Zamia  is  fur- 
nished with  fronds  that  scarce 
differ  from  those  of  a  fern.  Even 
Zamia  pectinata  may,  as  Stern- 
berg remarks,  have  been  a  fern. 
Lindley  and  Hutton  place  it 
merely  pi'ovisionally  among  the 
CycadaceaB,  in  deference  to  the  judgment  of  Adolphe 
Brogniart,  and  point  out  its  resemblance  to  Polypodium 
pectinatiim;  and  a  small  Helmsdale  frond  which  I  have 
placed  beside  it  bears  the  impress  of  a  character  scarce  less 
equivocal.  The  flora  of  the  Oolite  was  pecuUarlj  a  flora 
of  intermediate  forms. 

We  recognize  another  characteristic  of  our  Oolitic  floi-a 
in  its  simple-leaved  fronds,  in  some  of  the  species  not  a 
little  resembling  those  of  the  recent  Scolopendrium,  or 
Hart's-Tongue  fern,  —  a  form  regarded  by  Adolphe  Brog- 
niart as  peculiarly  characteristic  of  his  third  period  of 
vegetation.  These  simple  ferns  are,  in  the  Helmsdale  de- 
posits, of  three  distinct  types.  There  is  first  a  lanceolate 
leaf,  from  two  and  a  half  to  three  inches  in  length,  of 
not  unfrequent  occurrence,  Avhich  may  have  formed,  how- 
evei',  only  one  of  the  four  leaflets,  united  by  their  pseudo- 
footstalks,  which  compose  the  frond  of  Glossopteris,  —  a 
distinctive  Oolitic  genus.  There  is  next  a  simple  ovate  lan- 
41* 


486 


ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 


ceolate  leaf,  from  four  to  five  and  a  half  inches  in  length, 
which  in  form  and  venation,  and  all  save  its  thrice  gi'eater 


Fiff.  141. 


size,  not  a  little  resembles  the  leaflets  of  a  Coal  Measure 
neiiropteris,  —  N.  acuminata.  And,  in  the  third  place, 
there  are  the  simple  leaves  that  in  general  outline  resem- 
ble, as  I  have  said,  the  fronds  of  the  recent  Hart's-Tongue 
fern  {Scoloiyendriuni  vidgare)^  except  that  their  base  is  lan- 
ceolate, not  cordate.     Of  these  last  there  are  two  kinds  in 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  487 

the  beds,  representative  of  two  several  species,  or,  as  their 
difference  in  general  aspect  and  detail  is  very  great,  maj'- 
hap  two  several  genera.  The  smaller  of  the  two  has  a 
slender  midrib,  depressed  on  its  upper  side,  and  flanked  on 
each  side  by  a  row  of  minute,  slightly  elongated  protubei-- 
ances,  but  elevated  on  the  under  side,  and  flanked  by  rows 
of  small  but  well  marked  grooves,  that  curve  outwards  to 
the  edges  of  the  leaf  The  larger  resemble  a  Tieniopteris 
of  the  English  and  Continental  Oolites,  save  that  its  midrib 
is  more  massive,  its  venation  less  at  right  angles  with  the 
stem,  its  base  more  elongated,  and  its  size  much  greater. 
Some  of  the  Helmsdale  si^ecimens  are  of  gigantic  propor- 
tions. From,  however,  a  description  and  figure  of  a  plant 
of  evidently  the  same  genus,  —  a  Taeniopteris  of  the  Vir- 
ginian Oolite,  given  by  Professor  W.  B.  Rogers  of  the 
United  States,  —  I  find  that  some  of  the  American  fronds 
are  larger  still.  My  largest  leaf  from  Helmsdale  must 
have  been  nearly  five  inches  in  breadth ;  and  if  its  pro- 
portions Avere  those  of  some  of  the  smaller  ones  of  appa- 
rently the  same  species  from  the  same  locality,  it  must  have 
measured  about  thirty  inches  in  length.  But  fragments  of 
American  leaves  have  been  found  more  than  six  inches  in 
breadth,  and  whose  length  cannot  have  fallen  shprt  of  forty 
inches.  The  Treniopteris,  as  its  name  bears,  is  regarded  as 
a  fern.  From,  however,  the  leathern-like  thickness  of  some 
of  the  Sutherland  specimens,  —  from  the  great  massiveness 
of  their  midrib,  —  from  the  rectilinear  simplicity  of  their 
fibres,  —  and,  withal,  from,  in  some  instances,  their  great 
size,  —  I  am  much  disposed  to  believe  that  in  our  Scotch, 
mayhap  also  in  the  American  species,  it  may  have  been  the 
frond  of  some  simple-leaved  Cycas  or  Zamia.  But  the 
point  is  one  which  it  must  be  left  for  the  future  satisfac- 
torily to  settle ;  though  provisionally  I  may  be  permitted 
to  regard  these  leaves  as  belonging  to  some  Cycadaceous 


4«8 


ON   THE    LESS    KNOWN 


plant,  whose  fronds,  in  their  venation  and  form,  resembled 
the  simple  frqnds  of  Scolopendrium,  just  as  the  leaves  of 


Fig.  142. 


some  of  its  congeners  resembled  the  fronds  of  the  pinnate 
ferns. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  close  resemblance  which 
certain  Cycadaceous  genera  bear  to  certain  of  the  fern 
family.  In  at  least  two  species  of  Pterophyllum,  —  P. 
comptum  and  P.  minus,  —  the  divisions  of  the  leaflets 
seem  little  else  than  accidental  rents  in  a  simple  frond ;  in 
P.  JVelsoni  they  are  apparently  nothing  more ;  and  similar 
divisions,  evidently,  however,  the  eifect  of  accident,  and 
less  rounded  at  their  extremities  than  in  at  least  P.  comp- 
tuniy  we  find  exhibited  by  some  of  the  Helmsdale  speci- 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


489 


mens  of  Tceniopteris      (See  Fig.  142,  p,  488.)     But  what- 
ever the  nature  of  these  simple  fronds,  they  seem  to  impart 


Fig.  143. 


PECOPTERIS    OBTUSIFOLIA. 


much  of  its  peculiar  character,  all  the  world  over,  to  the 
flora  of  the  Oolitic  asres. 

The  compound  ferns  of  the  formation  are  numerous, 
and  at  least  proportionally  a  considerable  part  of  them 
seem  identical  in  species  With  tliose  of  the  Oolite  of  Eng- 
land. (See  Fig.  143.)  Among  these  there  occur  Pecopte- 
ris  Whitbiensis^  Pecopteris  obtusifolia.,  Pecopteris  insig- 
nis, — all  well  marked  English  species ;  with  several  others. 
It  has,  besides,  its  apparent  ferns,  that  seem  to  be  new  — 


^93 


CIT   'j.HL   LT, 


KilOV/N 


(Fig.  144) — that  are  at  least  not  figured  in  any  of  the  fossil 
floras  to  which  I  have  access,  —  (Fig.  145),  —  such  as  a  well 
defined  Pachypteris,  with  leaflets  broader  and  rounder  than 


FiK.  144. 


Fig.  145. 


PACHTPTEKIS. 


/< 


the  typical  P.  lanceolata^  and  a  much  stouter  midrib ;  a 
minute  Sphenopteris  too,  and  what  seems  to  be  a  Phle- 
bopteris,  somewhat  resembling  P.  propinqua^  but  greatly 
more  massive  in  its  general  proportions.  The  equisetacea 
we  find  represented  in  the  Brora  deposits  by  JEquisetum 
columjiare,  —  a  plant  the  broken  remains  of  which  occur  in 
great  abundance,  and  which,  as  was  remarked  by  our  Pres- 
dent  many  years  ago,  in  his  paper  on  the  Sutherlandshire 
Oolite,  must  have  entered  largely  into  the  composition  of 
tlie  bed  of  lignite  known  as  the  Brora  Coal.  We  find 
associated  with  it  wliat  seems  to  be  the  last  of  the  Cala 
mites,  —  Calamites  arenaceics,  —  a  name,  however,  Avhich 
seems  to  have  been  bestowed   both  on  this  Oolitic  plant 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND. 


491 


and  a  resembling  Carboniferous  species.  The  deposit  huf 
also  its  Lycopodites,  though,  from  their  resemblance  in 
foliage  to  the  conifers,  there  exists  that  difficulty  in  draw- 


Fig.  146. 


PHLEBOPTERIS. 


Ing  the  line  between  them  to  which  I  have  already  ad- 
verted. One  of  these,  however,  so  exactly  resembles  a 
lycopodite  of  both  the  Virginian  and  Yorkshire  Oolite,  — 
L.  uncifolius^  —  that  I  cannot  avoid  regarding  it  as  specifi- 
cally identical ;  and  it  seems  more  than  doubtful  whether 
the  stem  which  I  have  placed  among  the  conifers  is  not  a 
lycopodite  also.  It  exhibits  not  only  the  general  outline 
of  the  true  club  moss,  but,  like  the  fossil  club  mosses  too, 
it  wants  that  degree  of  ligniferous  body  in  the  rock  which 
the  coniferous  fossils  almost  always  possess.  Yet  another 
of  the  organisms  of  the  deposit  seems  to  have  been  either 
a  lycopodite  or  a  fern.     Its  leaflets  are  exceedingly  minute, 


492  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

and  set  alternately  on  a  stem  slender  as  a  hair,  —  circum- 
stances in  which  it  resembles  some  of  the  tiny  lycopodites 
Fig.  147.  of  the  tropics,  such  as  Lycopodium  apo- 

dium.  I  must  mention,  however,  that 
the  larger  plant  of  the  same  beds  which 
I  have  placed  beside  it,  and  which  resem- 
bles it  so  closely  that  my  engraver  finds 
it  difficult  to  indicate  any  other  difference 
between  them  than  that  of  size,  appears 
to  be  a  true  fern,  not  a  lycopodium.  To 
yet  another  vegetable  organism  of  the 
system,  —  an  organism  which  must  be 
regarded,  if  I  do  not  mistake  its  charac- 
tei",  as  at  once  very  interesting  and  ex- 
traordinary, occurring  as  it  does  so  low  in  the  scale,  and 
bearing  an  antiquity  so  high,  —  I  shall  advert,  after  a  pre- 
liminary remark  on  a  general  characteristic  of  the  flora  to 
which  it  belongs,  but  to  which  it  seems  to  furnish  a  striking 
exception. 

From  the  disappearance  of  many  of  those  anomalous 
types  of  the  Coal  Measures  which  so  puzzle  the  botanist, 
and  the  extensive  introduction  of  types  that  still  exist,  Ave 
can  better  conceive  of  the  general  features  and  relations  of 
the  flora  of  the  Oolite  than  of  those  of  the  earlier  floras. 
And  yet  the  general  result  at  which  we  arrive  may  be 
found  not  without  its  bearing  on  the  older  vegetations 
also.  Throughout  almost  all  the  families  of  this  Oolitic 
flora,  there  seems  to  have  run  a  curious  bond  of  relation- 
ship, which,  like  those  ties  which  bound  together  some  of 
the  old  clans  of  our  country,  united  them,  high  and  low, 
into  one  great  sept,  and  conferred  upon  them  a  certain 
wonderful  unity  of  character  and  appearance.  Let  us  as- 
sume the  ferns  as  our  central  group.  Though  less  abun- 
dant   than    in  the    earlier   creation   of  the   Carboniferous 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


493 


system,  they  seem  to  haA'e  occupied,  judging  from  their 
remains,  very  considerable  space  in  the  Oolitic  vegetation  ; 
and  with  the  ferns  there  were  associated  in  great  abun- 
dance the  two  prevailing  families  of  the  Pterides, — Equi- 
seta  and  Lycopodia, — plants  which,  in  most  of  our  modern 
treatises  on  the  ferns  proper,  take  their  place  as  the  fern 
allies.  (See  Fig.  148.)  Let  us  place  these  along  two  of  the 
sides  of  a  pentagon,  —  the  Lycopodia  on  the  right  side  of 

Fig.  148. 


Ferns. 

the  ferns,  the  Equiseta  on  the  left ;  further,  let  ns  occupy 
the  two  remaining  sides  of  the  figure  by  the  Coniferae  and 
the  Cycadaceae,  —  placing  the  Coniferse  on  the  side  next  A 
the  Lycopodia,  and  the  Cycadaceae,  as  the  last  added  key- 
stone of  the  erection,  between  these  and  the  Equiseta. 
And  now,  let  us  consider  how  very  curious  the  links  are 
which  give  a  wonderful  unity  to  the  whole.  We  still  find 
great  difiiculty  in  distinguishing  between  the  foliage  of 
some  of  even  the  existing  club  mosses  and  the  conifers ; 
and  the  ancient  Lepidodendra  are  very  generally  recog- 
nized as  of  a  type  intermediate  between  the  two.  Similar 
intermediate  types,  exemplified  by  extinct  families,  united 
the  conifers  and  the  ferns.  The  analogy  of  Kirchneria 
with  the  Thiyinfeldia,  says  Dr.  Braun,  is  very  remarkable, 
42 


494 


ON   THE   LESS   KNOWN 


notwithstanding  that  the  former  is  a  fern,  and  that  the  latt 
ter  is  ranked  among  conifers.  The  points  of  resemblance 
borne  by  the  conifers  to  the  huge  Equiseta  of  the  Oolitic 
period  seem  to  have  been  equally  striking.  The  pores 
which  traverse  longitudinally  the  channelled  grooves  by 
which  the  stems  of  our  recent  Equiseta  are  so  delicately 
fluted,  are  said  considerably  more  to  resemble  the  discs  of 


Fig.  149. 


IMBRICATED   STEM. 

(Helmsdale.) 


pines  and  araucarians  than  ordinary  stomata.  Mr.  Francis 
does  not  hesitate  to  say,  in  his  work  on  British  Ferns,  that 
the  relation  of  this  special  family  to  the  Coniferae  is  so 
stronff,  both  in  external  and  internal  structure,  that  it  is 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


4'JO 


I 


not  without  some  hesitation  he  places  them  among  the  fern 
allies ;  and  it  has  been  ascertained  by  Mr.  Dawes,  in  his 
researches  regarding  the  calamite,  that  in  its  internal  struc- 
ture this  apparent  representative  of  Equiseta  in  the  earlier 
ages  of  the  world  united  "  a  network  of  quadrangular  tis- 
sue similar  to  that  of  Conifera3  to  other  quadrangular  cells 
arranged  in  perpendicular  series,"  like  the  cells  of  plants 
of  a  humbler  order.  The  relations  of  the  Fig.  150. 
Cycadacean  order  to  ferns  on  the  one  hand, 
and  to  the  Coniferse  on  the  other,  are  equally 
well  marked.  As  in  the  ferns,  the  venation 
of  its  fronds  is  circinate,  or  scroll-like,  —  they 
have  in  several  respects  a  resembling  structure, 
—  in  at  least  one  recent  species  they  have  a  « 
nearly  identical  form ;  and  fronds  of  this  fern- 
like type  seem  to  have  been  comparatively 
common  during  the  times  of  the  Oolite.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  Cycadacese  manifest  close 
relations  to  the  conifers.  Both  have  their 
seeds  originally  naked ;  both  are  cone-bearing ; 
both  i^ossess  discs  on  the  sides  of  their  cellules ; 
and  in  both,  in  the  transverse  section,  these 
cellules  are  subhexagonal,  and  radiate  from  a 
centre.  Such  were  the  very  curious  relations 
that  united  into  one  great  sept  the  prevailing 
members  of  the  Oolitic  flora ;  and  similar  bonds 
of  connection  seem  to  have  existed  in  the  floras 
of  the  still  earlier  ages.  {Helmsdale,  i 

In  the  Oolite  of  Scotland  I  have,  however,  at  length 
found  trace  of  a  vegetable  organism  that  seems  to  have 
lain,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  outside  the  pentagon,  and 
was  not  a  member  of  any  of  the  great  families  which  it 
comprised.  (See  Fig.  151.)  I  succeeded  about  four  years 
ago  in  disinterring  from  the  limestone  of  Helmsdale  what 


49G 


ON    THE.  LESS    KNOWN 


appears  to  be  a  ti-ue  dicotyledonous  leaf,  with  the  frag- 
ment of  another  leaf,  which  I  at  first  supposed  might  have 
belonged  to  a  plant  of  the  same  great  class,  but  which  I 
now  find  might  have  been  a  portion  of  a  fern.  When 
Phlebopteris  Phillipsii  was  first  detected  in  the  Oolite  of 
Yorkshire,  Lindley  and  Hutton,  regarding  it  as  dicotyledo- 
nous, originated  their  term  Dictyopliillum  as  a  general  one 
for  all  such  leaves.  But  it  has  since  been  assigned  to  a 
greatly  lower  order,  —  the  ferns  ;  and  Sii"  Charles  Lyell  has 


Fig.  151 


kindly  shown  me  that  an  exotic  fei'n  of  the  present  day 
exhibits  exactly  such  a  reticulated  style  of  venation  as  my 
Helmsdale  fragment.  (See  Fig.  152,  p.  497.)  The  other 
leaf,  however,  though  also  fragmentary,  and  but  indiffer- 
ently preserved,  seems  to  be  decidedly  marked  by  the 
dicotyledonous  character ;  and  so  I  continue  to  regard  it, 
provisionally  at  least,  as  one  of  the  first  precursors  in  Scot- 
land of  our  great  forest  trees,  and  of  so  many  of  our  flower- 
ing and  fruit-bearing  plants,  and  as  apparently  occujn'ing 


FOSSIL  FLORAS  OF  SCOTLAND. 


497 


the  same  relative  place  in  advance  of  its  contemporaries  as 
that  occupied  by  the  conifer  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  in 
advance  of  the  ferns  and  Lycopodaceae  with  which  I  found 
it  associated.  In  the  arrangement  of  its  larger  veins  the 
better  preserved  Oolitic  leaf  somewhat  resembles  that  of  the 
buckthorn  ;  but  its  state  of  keeping  is  such  that  it  has 
foiled  to  leave  its  exterior  outline  in  the  stone. 

One  or  two  general  remarks,  in  conclusion,  on  the  Oolite 
flora  of  Scotland  may  be  permitted  me  by  the  Association. 


Fig.  152. 


In  its  aspect  as  a  whole  it  greatly  resembles  the  Oolite  flora 
of  Virginia,  though  separated  in  space  from  the  locality  in 
which  the  latter  occurs  by  a  distance  of  nearly  four  thou- 
sand miles.  There  are  several  species  of  plants  common  to 
42* 


498  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN 

botli,  such  as  Eqxiisetum  columnure^  Calaniites  arenaceiis^ 
Pecopteris  Whitbiensis,  Lycopodites  nncifoUus,  and  ap- 
parently Twniopteris  magnifolia ;  both,  too,  manifest  the 
great  abundance  in  which  they  were  developed  of  old  by 
the  beds  of  coal  into  which  their  remains  have  been  con- 
verted. The  coal  of  the  Virginia  Oolite  has  been  profit- 
ably wrought  for  many  years :  it  is  stated  by  Sir  Charles 
Lyell,  who  carefully  examined  the  deposit,  and  has  given 
US  the  results  of  his  observation  in  his  second  sei'ies  of 
Travels  in  the  United  States,  that  the  annual  quan- 
tity taken  from  the  Oolitic  pits  by  Philadelphia  alone 
amounted  to  ten  thousand  tons ;  and  though,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  Sutherlandshire  deposit  has  never  been  profitably 
wrought,  it  has  been  at  least  Avrought  more  extensively  than 
any  other  in  the  British  Oolite.  The  seam  of  Brora, vary- 
ing from  three  feet  three  to  three  feet  eight  inches  in  thick- 
ness, furnished,  says  Sir  Roderick  Murchison,  between  the 
years  1814  and  1826,  no  less  than  seventy  thousand  tons  of 
coal.  Such  is  its  extent,  too,  that  nearly  thirty  miles  from 
the  pit's  mouth  (in  Ross-shire  under  the  Northern  Sutor)  I 
have  found  it  still  existing,  though  in  diminished  propor- 
tions, ^s  a  decided  coal  seam,  which  it  must  have  taken  no 
small  amount  of  vegetable  matter  to  form.  And  almost  on 
the  other  side  of  the  world,  nearly  five  thousand  miles  from 
the  Sutherland  beds,  and  more  than  eight  thousand  miles 
from  the  Carolina  ones,  the  same  Oolitic  flora  again  appears, 
associated  with  beds  of  coal.  At  Nagpur  in  Central  India 
the  Oolitic  Sandstones  abound  in  simple  fronded  ferns,  such 
as  Treniopteris  and  Glossopteris,  and  has  its  Zamites,  its 
coniferous  leaves,  and  its  equisetacese. 

Compared  wnth  existing  floras,  that  of  our  Scottish  Oolite 
seems  to  have  most  nearly  resembled  the  flora  of  New  Zea- 
land, —  a  flora  remarkable  for  the  great  abundance  of  its 
ferns,  and  its  vast  forests  of  coniferous  trees,  that  retain  at 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND.  499 

all  seasons  their  coverings  of  acicular  spiky  leaves.  It  is 
to  this  flora  that  Dacrydium  cupressinum^ — so  like  a  club 
moss  in  its  foliage,  —  belongs ;  and  PodocaTpus  ferrxi- 
gineus,  —  a  tree  which  more  closely  resembles  in  its  foliage 
the  Eathie  conifer,  save  that  its  spiky  leaves  are  somewhat 
narrower  and  longer  than  any  other  with  which  I  am  ac- 
quainted. About  two  thirds  of  the  plants  which  cover  the 
l^lains,  or  rise  on  the  hill-sides  of  that  country,  are  crypto- 
gamic,  consisting  mainly  of  ferns  and  their  allies ;  and  it  is 
a  curious  circumstance,  —  which  was,  however,  not  without 
precedent  in  the  merely  physical  conditions  of  the  Oolitic 
flora  of  Scotland,  —  that  so  shallow  is  the  soil  even  where 
its  greatest  forests  have  sprung  up,  and  so  immediately 
does  the  rock  lie  below,  that  the  central  axes  of  the  trees 
do  not  elongate  downwards  into  a  tap,  but  throw  out  hori- 
zontally on  every  side  a  thick  network  of  roots,  which  rises 
so  high  over  the  surface  as  to  render  walking  through  the 
woods  a  difficult  and  very  fatiguing  exercise.  The  flora  of 
the  Oolite,  like  that  of  New  Zealand,  seems  to  have  been 
in  large  part  cryptogamic,  consisting  of  ferns  and  the  allied 
horse-tail  and  club  moss  families.  Its  forests  seem  to  have 
contained  only  cone-bearing  trees;  at  least  among  the 
many  thousand  specimens  of  its  fossil  woods  which  have 
been  examined,  no  tissue  of  the  true  dicotyledonous  char- 
acter has  yet  been  found ;  and  witli  the  exception  of  the 
leaves  just  described,  all  those  yet  found  in  the  System, 
which  could  have  belonged  to  true  trees,  are  of  the  acicu- 
lar form  common  to  the  Coniferge,  and  show  in  their  dense 
ligneous  structure  that  they  were  persistent,  not  deciduous. 
Nor  is  there  evidence  wanting  that  many  of  the  Coniferge 
of  the  period  grew  in  so  shallow  a  soil,  that  their  tap-roots 
were  flattened  and  bent  backwards,  and  they  were  left  to 
derive  their  sole  support,  like  the  trees  of  the  New  Zealand 
forests,  from  such  of  their  roots  as  shot  out  horizontally. 


500  OX    THE    LESS    KXOAVN 

We  even  know  the  nature  of  the  rock  upon  which  they 
rested.  As  shown  by  fragments  still  locked  up  among  the 
interstices  of  their  petrified  roots,  it  was  an  Old  Red  flag- 
stone similar  to  that  of  Caithness  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Wick  and  Thurso,  and  containing  the  same  fossil  remains. 
In  the  water-rolled  pebbles  of  the  Conglomerate  of  Helms- 
dale and  Port  Gower,  —  pebbles  encrusted  by  Oolitic  cor- 
als, and  enclosed  in  a  calcareous  paste,  containing  Oolitic 
belemnites  and  astreje,  —  I  have  found  the  well  marked 
fishes  and  fucoids  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone.  As  shown 
by  the  appearance  of  the  rounded  masses  in  which  these 
lay,  they  must  have  presented  as  ancient  an  appearance  in 
•  the  times  of  the  Lower  Oolite  as  they  do  now ;  and  the 
glimpse  which  they  lent  of  so  remote  an  antiquity,  through 
the  medium  of  an  antiquity  which,  save  for  the  comparison 
which  they  furnished  the  means  of  instituting,  might  be 
well  deemed  superlatively  remote,  I  have  felt  singularly 
\  awe-iijspiring  and  impressive.  Macaulay  anticipates  a  time 
when  the  traveller  from  some  distant  land  shall  take  his 
stand  on  a  broken  arch  of  London  Bridge  to  survey  the 
ruins  of  St.  Paul's.  In  disinterring  from  amid  the  antique 
remains  of  the  Oolite  the  immensely  more  antique  remains 
of  the  O^d  Red  Sandstone,  I  have  felt  as  such  a  traveller 
would  feel  if,  on  setting  himself  to  dig  among  the  scattered 
heaps  for  memorials  of  the  ruined  city,  he  had  fallen  on 
what  had  been  once  the  Assyrian  Gallery  of  the  British 
Museum,  and  had  found  mingling  with  the  antiquities  of 
perished  London  the  greatly  older  and  more  venerable 
antiquities  of  Nineveh  or  of  Babylon.  The  land  of  the 
Oolite  in  this  northern  locality  must  have  been  covered  by 
a  soil  which,  —  except  that  from  a  lack  of  the  botxlder  clays 
it  must  have  been  i^ooi'er  and  shallower,  —  must  have  not 
a  little  resembled  that  of  the  lower  plains  of  Cromarty, 
Caithness,  and  Eastern  Ross.     And  on  this  Palaeozoic  plat- 


FOSSIL    FLORAS    OF    SCOTLAND  501 

form,  long  exposed,  as  tlie  Oolitic  Conglomerates  abun- 
dantly testify,  to  denuding  and  disintegrating  agencies,  —  a 
platform  beaten  by  the  surf  where  it  descended  to  the  sea 
level,  and  washed  in  the  interior  by  riv^ers,  with  here  a  tall 
hill  or  abrupt  precipice,  and  there  a  flat  plain  or  sluggish 
morass,  —  there  grew  vast  forests  of  cone-bearing  trees, 
tangled  thickets  of  gigantic  equisetacese,  numerous  forms 
of  Cycas  and  Zamia,  and  wide-rolling  seas  of  fern,  amid 
whose  open  spaces  club  mosses  of  extinct  tribes  sent  forth 
their  long,  creeping  stems,  spiky  and  dry,  and  thickly  mot- 
tled unth  pseudo-spore-bearing  catkins. 

The  curtain  drops  over  this  ancient  flora  of  the  Oolite  in 
Scotland ;  and  when,  long  after,  there  is  a  corner  of  the 
thick  enveloping  screen  withdrawn,  and  we  catch  a  partial 
glimpse  of  one  of  the  old  Tertiary  forests  of  our  country, 
all  is  new.  Trees  of  the  high  dicotyledonous  class,  allied 
to  the  plane  and  the  buckthorn,  prevail  in  the  landscape, 
intermingled,  however,  with  dingy  funereal  yews ;  and  the 
ferns  and  equisetje  that  rise  in  the  darker  openings  of  the 
wood  approach  to  the  existing  type.  And  yet,  though 
eons  of  the  past  eternity  have  elapsed  since  we  looked  out 
upon  Cycas  and  Zamia,  and  the  last  of  the  Calamites,  the 
time  is  still  early,  and  long  ages  must  lapse  ere  man  shall 
arise  out  of  the  dust,  to  keep  and  to  dress  fields  Avaving 
with  the  productions  of  yet  another  and  diiferent  flora,  and 
to  busy  himself  with  all  the  labor  which  he  taketh  under 
the  sun.  Our  country,  in  this  Tertiary  time,  has  still  its 
great  outbursts  of  molten  matter,  that  buiy  in  fiery  deluges 
many  feet  in  depth,  and  many  square  miles  in  extent,  the 
debris  of  wide  tracts  of  woodland  and  marsh  ;  and  the 
basaltic  columns  still  form  in  its  great  lava  bed ;  and  ever 
and  anon,  as  the  volcanic  agencies  awake,  clouds  of  ashes 
darken  the  heavens,  and  cover  up  the  landscape  as  if  with 
accumulated  drifts  of  a  protracted  snow  storm.     Who  shall 


502  ON    THE    LESS    KNOWN,    ETC. 

declare  ^rhat,  throughout  these  long  ages,  the  history  of 
creation  has  been?  We  see  at  wide  intervals  the  mere 
fragments  of  successive  floras;  but  know  not  how  what 
seem  the  blank  interspaces  were  filled,  or  how,  as  extinction 
overtook  in  succession  one  tribe  of  existences  after  another, 
and  species,  like  individuals,  yielded  to  the  great  law  of 
death,  yet  other  species  were  brought  to  the  birth,  and 
ushered  upon  the  scene,  and  the  chain  of  being  was  niain- 
_^tained  unbroken.  We  see  only  detached  bits  of  that  green 
web  which  has  covered  our  earth  ever  since  the  dry  land 
first  appeared ;  but  the  Aveb  itself  seems  to  have  been 
continuous  throughout  all  time ;  though  ever  as  breadth 
after  breadth  issued  from  the  creative  loom,  the  pattern 
has  altered,  and  the  sculpturesque  and  graceful  forms  that 
illustrated  its  first  beginnings  and  its  middle  spaces  have 
yielded  to  flowers  of  richer  color  and  blow,  and  fruits  of 
fairer  shade  and  outline ;  and  for  gigantic  club  mosses 
stretching  forth  their  hirsute  arms,  goodly  trees  of  the 
Lord  have  expanded  their  great  boughs ;  and  for  the 
barren  fern  and  the  calamite,  clustering  in  thickets  beside 
the  waters,  or  spreading  on  flowerless  hill  slopes,  luxuriant 
orchards  have  yielded  their  ruddy  flush,  and  rich  harvests 
their  golden  gleam. 


THE  END, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


JD 


m   MARIO p97S 

Jan  1 1  ^98v 

WAR  1  '^  'i^82 


Form  L9-32m-8,'58(5876s4)444: 


irsniiTHfRNRrr.inNAL  library  facility 


AA    000  616  248    i 


3   1158  00743  3930 


